Movies by female screenwriters top profit and return on investment rankings, but women are still severely underrepresented in the industry, highlighting a ‘capital allocation puzzle’.

When the lights come back on and credits start rolling, it’s easy to see that some of the most successful movies of the last few years – from Avatar: The Way of Water and Jurassic World to Barbie – were (co-)directed or (co-)written by women. These are among the kinds of films that bring in the most money for studios, a new Frontiers in Communication study has noted.

“Films with a woman screenwriter but no woman director had 34% higher median profits than films with only men in those roles, despite similar budgets,” said Anja Huwiler, the study’s author and a researcher at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. “Yet 39 of the 44 films in the top 1% of production budgets were male-only productions, and none involved a woman director.”

Top earners

The study used a dataset of almost 200,000 movies released between 1994 and 2023, including theatrical and non-theatrical releases. For a subset of over 4,200 films, production budgets and worldwide gross revenues were obtained.

One clear trend was the slow pace of change. “The share of films crediting at least one woman as a director or screenwriter increased from 21.5% in 1994 to 29.4% in 2023. After nearly 30 years, fewer than one in three films included a woman in either role,” said Huwiler.

In the financial subset, another – and perhaps more puzzling – pattern emerged: Films written, but not directed, by women, with budgets comparable to those of male-only productions, generated the highest median profit of around $35.9 million – 34% higher than the median profit of male-only productions ($26.8 million).

Films written but not directed by women also generated a higher return on investment (ROI), which is a measure assessing capital efficiency. A positive value means a project generated more money than it cost. ROI excludes marketing and distribution costs and other revenue sources. These films had a ROI of 1.1, 25% higher than that of male-only films (0.88). Films with women in both directing and screenwriting roles achieved a similar ROI to male-only films when operating on half the budget.

Films with higher budgets were male-dominated, accounting for 74.8%, 78.6%, and 88.6% in the top 10%, 5%, and 1% of budgets, respectively. Yet no film involving a woman director reached the top 1% of production budgets across the 30-year period.

“Among the 44 films in the top 1% of production budgets, the five films written but not directed by a woman had a median profit about $113 million higher than male-only films, despite having slightly lower median budgets,” said Huwiler.

In the top 5% of budgets, the median profit of films with a woman screenwriter but no woman director was $556 million, around $86 million higher than the male-only median; and in the top 10% it was around $452 million, around $134 million more than that of male-only productions.

A mismatched industry

While the current study did not examine the factors that drive this, previous research suggests it may be because people in decision-making positions are keen to avoid uncertainty and risk and tend to stick to what is familiar.

“The extreme uncertainty of film financing can make familiar people and established ways of working feel safer, especially when decision-makers are risk- or loss-averse. This can reinforce the status quo even when the financial evidence points elsewhere,” Huwiler pointed out.

Achieving lasting change is difficult. Following the #MeToo movement in 2017, women’s participation continued to rise, but the study found no lasting acceleration in its rate of growth.

The study did not test what would produce lasting change. “I suspect it may require changing how people get their chance in the first place,” said Huwiler. “One possibility is to make looking beyond those familiar circles a normal part of staffing and budgeting decisions, rather than something that depends on one individual deciding to take a chance.”

Huwiler pointed out that the financial subset represented predominantly U.S. theatrical releases, and that some groups – for example, women directors – were small, making some findings descriptive. Gender was also inferred by first names in the entire dataset, which could mean that women from certain backgrounds may be undercounted.

“I think one value of this study is that it looks at the issue through a financial lens, not only as a question of representation,” concluded Huwiler. “Studios and investors care about whether their investment decisions are consistent with the financial outcomes they observe. My results provide a reason to examine existing hiring, greenlighting, and budgeting practices.”