Diversity in Hollywood's top films isn't improving, with a new report finding roles for women, minorities and the LGBT community are largely unchanged from 2007.
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The annual report from the Media, Diversity, and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found roles for women and non-whites in 2015's biggest 100 films was at the same level they were nine years ago, with the industry being slammed for "entrenched inequality".
Only 31 per cent of speaking roles were female, less than 1 per cent were gay, lesbian and trans-identifying characters, 12 per cent were black, 5.3 per cent were Latino and just 3.9 per cent were Asian.
Representation was even worse for characters depicted with a disability, making up just 2.4 per cent of speaking roles.
Things were also just as bad behind the camera. Only 5.5 per cent of directors were African-American and just 2.8 per cent were Asian. Women directors made up 4.1 per cent.
The report's authors damned the industry, calling Hollywood "the cultural epicentre of exclusionary hiring practices" with "pervasive and systematic" problems with inclusiveness.
Lead author Professor Stacey Smith said the status-quo remained unchanged, despite highfalutin rhetoric in the industry about activism.
"We're seeing entrenched inequality," Smith told Associated Press. "Whether we're studying gender, race, ethnicity, LGBT or characters with disabilities, we're really seeing exclusionary forces leaving out anybody that's not a straight, white, able-bodied man."
"Despite all the chatter and all the activism and all the press attention, it's another year where the status quo has been maintained."
Since 2007, the university has analysed the demographic makeup of the actors, directors, writers and more from each year's 100 most popular films.
In 2015, more than 73 per cent of roles in Hollywood's biggest films went to white actors. The revelation follows last year's #OscarsSoWhite controversy when not a single actor of colour was nominated in the Oscars acting category for the second year in a row.
The report made several recommendations, including adding five extra female characters to every script in order to reach on-screen gender equality by 2018.
Professors also suggested Hollywood's biggest stars include equity rider to their contracts which would enforce directors to cast minorities in order to secure the big talent.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Cheryl Boone Isaacs mounted a push toward diversity in July, inviting 683 more members to become Oscar judges, the majority of which were female and people of colour.
