Box Office Success: Is It About Gender?
The (lack of) prevalence of women on the film set has
been a topic of much debate. While the movie business has been making progress
in the right direction on this account, true gender equality is still some way
off. This blog is inspired by some articles which claim to observe some
interesting parallels between a movie’s lead gender and its success at the box
office. Female-led films outperform at box office, Films with female stars earn more, and Movies Starring Women Make More Money are just some of the headlines
that have spawned in this study’s wake.
This blog post reports our findings concerning the casting of females in movies. Here, we considered movies released between 2014 and 2017 inclusive. The 541 movies were labeled with the lead character’s gender. We created three separate categories: male-led, female-led, and movies with neither a clear male or female lead. This last category mainly encompasses movies having an ensemble cast containing both actors and actresses. Examples of this include Suicide Squad and Passengers. However, if the ensemble cast consists of almost exclusively male leads or almost exclusively female leads, the movie was labeled as having a male or female lead. An example of an all-female ensemble cast is Ghostbusters.
Below figure shows that there are a significant number of movies which do not have a clear female or male lead, and thus fall into the category of neither.
Box Office by Gender
How does lead gender influence a movie’s box office performance? We investigated the difference in global box office earnings between male and female-led movies. The result can be seen in Figure 2, which compares the average global box office between the two lead genders for different production budget ranges. Although the averages for female-led movies are slightly higher than those for male leads, the differences are too small to conclude that this is the result of some systematic gender-related phenomenon. This is especially true considering the small number of examples for female-led movies and the large spread of box office revenues.
Figure 2: the average box office by lead gender and production budget. The x-axis shows the film production budget intervals we considered. The y-axis shows the average global box office. The numbers on top of the bars represent the number of movies that fall into the category. The error bars represent the standard deviation of the global box office within each category.
Only for movies with a production budget in the 30-50M range does the difference seem significant enough to take a closer look. Figure 3 compares the distributions of global box office revenues for movies that fall into this range. It shows that the large difference between the two averages is not caused by a systematic shift, but is instead entirely due to two female-led high earning titles. Although this data does not contradict the claim that female-led movies are more successful, two data points are too few to draw the conclusion from with any degree of certainty.
Given the outcome of our analysis, we cannot confirm that female-led movies perform significantly better at the box office than male-led movies. Instead, our findings show that box office revenues of male-led and female-led movies are quite similar and that any observed differences are largely caused by the presence of just a few outliers. While our data neither proves nor rejects the claim that having a female lead has a positive effect on the box office, we can reject the belief that it is better to have a male lead. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the influence of lead gender on the box office is probably non-existent and most likely minimal at best.
Presence of Women in Movies
We took a look at the number of females among the top ten actors, based on IMDb’s ranking, for each movie. Figure 4 shows the evolution of this number throughout the years. As can be seen in the figure, the movie industry still has some ground to cover before reaching gender equality. However, it is reassuring to see that we are slowly but surely making progress towards that goal.
To further investigate the rather low presence of females in movies, we zoomed in on the distribution of female presence in movies in recent years. Figure 5 shows how lopsided this distribution is. Especially noteworthy is the extremely low number of female-dominated movies, compared to the plethora of male-dominated ones.
Even though we cannot conclude that women bring in more box office revenue, we can reject the opposite claim as well. This means that there is no reason not to cast more women, either in lead roles or supporting roles. We noticed that the presence of females in movies has been steadily rising throughout the years, but it is a slow process. Women are still underrepresented, but hopefully the success of movies with prominent female leads such as “Wonder Woman” and “Captain Marvel” lead to an accelerated pace towards gender equality in the near future.
This blog post reports our findings concerning the casting of females in movies. Here, we considered movies released between 2014 and 2017 inclusive. The 541 movies were labeled with the lead character’s gender. We created three separate categories: male-led, female-led, and movies with neither a clear male or female lead. This last category mainly encompasses movies having an ensemble cast containing both actors and actresses. Examples of this include Suicide Squad and Passengers. However, if the ensemble cast consists of almost exclusively male leads or almost exclusively female leads, the movie was labeled as having a male or female lead. An example of an all-female ensemble cast is Ghostbusters.
Below figure shows that there are a significant number of movies which do not have a clear female or male lead, and thus fall into the category of neither.
 |
| Figure 1: the number of movies for each lead gender category |
Box Office by Gender
How does lead gender influence a movie’s box office performance? We investigated the difference in global box office earnings between male and female-led movies. The result can be seen in Figure 2, which compares the average global box office between the two lead genders for different production budget ranges. Although the averages for female-led movies are slightly higher than those for male leads, the differences are too small to conclude that this is the result of some systematic gender-related phenomenon. This is especially true considering the small number of examples for female-led movies and the large spread of box office revenues.
Figure 2: the average box office by lead gender and production budget. The x-axis shows the film production budget intervals we considered. The y-axis shows the average global box office. The numbers on top of the bars represent the number of movies that fall into the category. The error bars represent the standard deviation of the global box office within each category.
Only for movies with a production budget in the 30-50M range does the difference seem significant enough to take a closer look. Figure 3 compares the distributions of global box office revenues for movies that fall into this range. It shows that the large difference between the two averages is not caused by a systematic shift, but is instead entirely due to two female-led high earning titles. Although this data does not contradict the claim that female-led movies are more successful, two data points are too few to draw the conclusion from with any degree of certainty.
 |
Figure 3: the number of female-led and male-led movies by global box office. Only movies with a production budget in between 30M and 50M dollars are shown
|
Given the outcome of our analysis, we cannot confirm that female-led movies perform significantly better at the box office than male-led movies. Instead, our findings show that box office revenues of male-led and female-led movies are quite similar and that any observed differences are largely caused by the presence of just a few outliers. While our data neither proves nor rejects the claim that having a female lead has a positive effect on the box office, we can reject the belief that it is better to have a male lead. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the influence of lead gender on the box office is probably non-existent and most likely minimal at best.
Presence of Women in Movies
We took a look at the number of females among the top ten actors, based on IMDb’s ranking, for each movie. Figure 4 shows the evolution of this number throughout the years. As can be seen in the figure, the movie industry still has some ground to cover before reaching gender equality. However, it is reassuring to see that we are slowly but surely making progress towards that goal.
 |
| Figure 4: the average number of females in the top ten cast members throughout the years |
To further investigate the rather low presence of females in movies, we zoomed in on the distribution of female presence in movies in recent years. Figure 5 shows how lopsided this distribution is. Especially noteworthy is the extremely low number of female-dominated movies, compared to the plethora of male-dominated ones.
 |
| Figure 5: the number of movies made between 2014 and 2017 by the number of females in the top ten cast members |
Even though we cannot conclude that women bring in more box office revenue, we can reject the opposite claim as well. This means that there is no reason not to cast more women, either in lead roles or supporting roles. We noticed that the presence of females in movies has been steadily rising throughout the years, but it is a slow process. Women are still underrepresented, but hopefully the success of movies with prominent female leads such as “Wonder Woman” and “Captain Marvel” lead to an accelerated pace towards gender equality in the near future.
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