LOS ANGELES — Out of the top 100 movies in 2024, more than half featured a story centered on a female actor as a lead or co-lead, the first time representation has been above the US Census where girls and women comprise 50.5% of the population, a 2025 report from the University of Southern California found.

However, representation fell for people of color in film, the report said.

The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative examined 1,800 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2024 and assessed the gender, race, and ethnicity as well as the ages of the leading and co-leading actors for each movie.

“This is the first time we can say that gender equality has been reached in top-grossing films,” said Dr. Stacy L. Smith, founder of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

“This is not the result of an economic awakening but is due to a number of different constituencies and efforts — at advocacy groups, at studios, through DEI initiatives — to assert the need for equality on screen,” Ms. Smith added.

Films like Wicked with lead Cynthia Erivo, Anora with lead Mikey Madison, and Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga set the stage for these gains in Hollywood gender equality.

Out of the 100 top-grossing films of 2024, 54 featured a girl or woman in a lead or co-lead role, the USC report said.

This reflects an increase from 2023, when only 30 movies featured a female-identified protagonist.

Over half of the films distributed by Universal Pictures (66.7%), Warner Bros. Pictures (55.6%), and Lionsgate (54.5%) featured a female actor as the lead or co-lead of the story, the report found.

About 40% or more of films were centered on a female lead or co-lead at Paramount Pictures (44.4%), Walt Disney Studios (40%), and Sony Pictures Entertainment (38.5%).

However, leads and co-leads from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups have declined significantly, as only 25 of the top 100 films featured a lead of color in 2024, a decrease from 2023, when 37 leads or co-leads were people of color.

A third of all Paramount Pictures films released in 2024 featured a lead or co-lead of color, with Lionsgate (27.3%) and Universal Pictures (26.7%) having similar demographics.

Walt Disney Studios (20%), Sony Pictures Entertainment (15.4%), and Warner Bros. Pictures (11.1%) reflected even lower numbers.

In 2024, no distributors reached proportional representation with the US Census (41.6%).

“This downturn signifies a lack of investment in storytelling that reflects the audience as a whole,” Ms. Smith said.

“The reality is that audiences want to see stories about women and people of color — studios and filmmakers do not have to choose between the two,” she added.

Thirteen films in 2024 had a woman of color lead or co-lead, which is similar to USC’s 2023 report and higher than the 2007 report.

“While this year’s findings mark a historic step towards proportional representation for women there is still work to be done for women of color,” said Katherine Neff, the study’s lead author. — Reuters

BERLIN — Organizers of the Berlin Film Festival hope that politics will not eclipse the movies this time round even as they try to liven up an event that has looked jaded in recent years.

The Berlinale, which opened on Thursday, has always been the most political of the big international film festivals and this year’s takes place days ahead of German elections. Conflict in the Middle East also looms.

“Last year was an incredibly political festival. Politics sort of took over from cinema. And I think and maybe fear that that’s going to happen this year as well,” Scott Roxborough, European bureau chief for The Hollywood Reporter, told Reuters.

The first festival headed by new director Tricia Tuttle runs until Feb. 23 — the same day Germans vote in national elections that could hand considerable wins to the far right.

US-born Ms. Tuttle has acknowledged the festival’s political history but does not want such discourse to overshadow the films themselves. The festival will not issue a statement about the elections, though she encouraged Germans to vote.

Discussions about the war between Israel and the Palestinians will also probably be unavoidable despite organizers’ efforts, Mr. Roxborough said.

Last year’s closing ceremony drew criticism from German politicians after several winners expressed solidarity with the Palestinians and criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The festival said in a note that clothes or symbols showing solidarity with the Palestinians were allowed but certain phrases required caution.

Several pro-Palestinian groups have called for filmmakers to boycott this year’s festival over the government’s support for Israel, and there are likely to be protests at the red carpet and elsewhere.

Two films about Israelis taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, will be shown at the festival, and there is also a film about a young parkour athlete in Gaza.

Roxborough said Ms. Tuttle faces the task of making the festival relevant again after its status has fallen among filmgoers in the last few years.

“There’s going to be an effort this year to try and get Berlin back up the charts,” he said.

Two of its biggest films — the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown and the Robert Pattinson-led Mickey 17 — already had their international premieres, leaving only Richard Linklater’s latest, Blue Moon, to celebrate its world premiere in Berlin.

“But…for a festival like this, of the size of Berlin, you want at least half a dozen exciting, big movies that everybody wants to see,” he said.

Mr. Pattinson and Timothée Chalamet, who plays Dylan, as well as Ben Whishaw, Margaret Qualley, and Chloe Sevigny are among the actors set to hit the red carpet to promote their new movies.

INDEPENDENT DARLING
Several art house films will be premiered, including previous festival winner Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25 and British screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s directorial debut Hot Milk.

There are 19 films in competition for the Golden Bear top prize that will be awarded by a jury headed by US director Todd Haynes at a closing ceremony on Feb. 22.

The parallel European Film Market remains important as a place to buy and sell independent movies, Roxborough added.

“The big sort of splashy Hollywood movies may be showing elsewhere, but here is where you can, in the cold weather, get into the theater and sit for two hours with depressing, psychologically disturbing, but deeply moving drama,” he said.

“That’s sort of what you come to Berlin for.”  — Reuters

LONDON — Oscar-winning US actor Kevin Spacey is facing another British lawsuit alleging sexual abuse, just over 18 months after he was cleared of all charges in a high-profile criminal trial.

Mr. Spacey, 65, was sued in a civil suit by a claimant at London’s High Court on Wednesday, according to court records. No details of the lawsuit were available.

The case is also being brought against London’s Old Vic theater, where Mr. Spacey worked as artistic director from around 2003.

Mr. Spacey, who is facing a separate lawsuit in London for alleged sexual abuse, was not immediately available for comment.

During his criminal trial, Mr. Spacey, who has always denied accusations of sexual misconduct, said three of the complainants in the criminal case had also brought civil claims against him.

“I take full responsibility for my past behavior and my actions, but I cannot and will not take responsibility or apologize to anyone who’s made up stuff about me or exaggerated stories about me,” he said in a TV interview last year.

The Old Vic could not immediately be reached for comment. A spokesperson for the claimant’s law firm confirmed a lawsuit had been filed.

Mr. Spacey, who won Oscars for American Beauty and The Usual Suspects, was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars before he was first accused of sexual assault in 2017, following which he was dropped from the TV drama House of Cards.

He stood trial at London’s Southwark Crown Court in 2023, charged with sexually assaulting four men in Britain between 2004 and 2013, and was acquitted on his 64^th birthday. — Reuters

NEW YORK — A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld R. Kelly’s sex trafficking and racketeering conviction, saying extensive evidence supported keeping the former R&B superstar behind bars for decades.

The 2^nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected Kelly’s claims that federal prosecutors failed to prove he led a racketeering scheme where he recruited women and underage girls for sex and then violated several victims.

Circuit Judge Denny Chin said prosecutors offered “extensive evidence showing how Kelly ensnared young girls and women into his orbit, endeavored to control their lives, and secured their compliance with his personal and sexual demands through verbal and physical abuse, threats of blackmail, and humiliation.”

Writing for a three-judge panel, Chin also said jurors could conclude that Mr. Kelly, 58, intended to convince victims they would be harmed if they failed to honor his sexual demands.

Mr. Kelly’s lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said her client may appeal to the US Supreme Court because the decision improperly expanded the reach of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.

The decision “gives the government limitless discretion to apply the RICO statute to situations absurdly remote from the statute’s intent,” Ms. Bonjean said. “The statute was intended to punish organized crime, not individual conduct.”

A spokesman for the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn declined to comment.

Mr. Kelly is serving a 30-year prison sentence after a Brooklyn, New York jury convicted him in September 2021 of one count of racketeering and eight counts of violating the Mann Act, which forbids transporting people across state lines for prostitution.

His case became among the most prominent #MeToo-era prosecutions.

Kelly was previously perhaps best known for his 1996 Grammy-winning hit “I Believe I Can Fly.” His full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly.

VICTIMS PORTRAYED REPRESSION
Wednesday’s decision came as jailed rapper and music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs awaits his scheduled May 5 trial in Manhattan federal court on sex trafficking charges.

Dozens of women and men have filed civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct. Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty and maintained his innocence.

Mr. Kelly’s trial followed two decades of misconduct accusations, which he had repeatedly denied.

Jurors heard testimony from 45 government witnesses, including several victims, that portrayed in often graphic detail the repression that prosecutors said Mr. Kelly and his entourage imposed.

This included requirements that victims refer to Mr. Kelly as “Daddy,” get permission to eat or use the bathroom, and write “apology letters” that purported to absolve him of blame.

The appeal included arguments by Mr. Kelly that prosecutors failed to prove he intended to expose victims to herpes by concealing his diagnosis before having unprotected sex.

Mr. Kelly also argued that four jurors had known too much about the case and were biased against him.

The case is separate from Mr. Kelly’s September 2022 conviction by a Chicago jury of child sex crimes.

He was sentenced there to 20 years in prison, but the judge added just one year to Mr. Kelly’s imprisonment, with the other 19 years overlapping the 30-year sentence.

In October, the US Supreme Court rejected Mr. Kelly’s appeal from the Chicago conviction.

Mr. Kelly is at the Butner, North Carolina medium-security prison that once housed late Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff. He is eligible for release in December 2045, at age 78. — Reuters