20th Century Fox released its schedule of upcoming releases for 2016 and 2017 at CinemaCon, the annual event for theater owners, and one uncomfortable observation has emerged: no women are scheduled to direct any of studio's planned 23 films.
Fox is the studio behind box-office hits like "Deadpool," "The Martian," and "The Revenant." None of the upcoming movies listed over the next two years will have women behind the director's chair and, as Casey Cipriani and Melissa Silverstein of IndieWire have noted, no woman has directed a live-action film for the studio since 2010.
The 2016 animated adventure, "Kung Fu Panda 3," was co-directed by a woman, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, and is the only 20th Century Fox release this year with a woman in the director's chair.
The conversation on women in media has been ongoing and in 2015, the L.A. Times reported striking numbers on gender diversity from the "big six" studios: Disney, Warner Bros, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Sony, and Paramount Pictures. They reported only 4.6% of 2015's films released by the six major studios were directed by women. No studio has released more than five films directed by women in a single year and Disney has only released five films directed by women in total since 2009.
Breaking the trend is 2017's "Wonder Woman," which will be directed by Patty Jenkins. The first superhero film to star a woman since 2005's "Elektra," will also be the first directed by a woman.
Of course, studio slates change all the time. It's not unlikely that 20th Century Fox will either add or remove a film from the line-up and it's entirely possible that new directors will become attached to projects.
