A new report released today by GLAAD indicates that in 2016, major movie studios still did a crappy job at LGBTQ representation, with just 18.4 percent of the 125 releases featuring characters that were identified as such. While that’s slightly up from 2015, it’s still unimpressive, especially given that of the 23 films that had LGBTQ characters, 43 percent gave said characters less than one minute of screen time. GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis put it simply in an interview with Variety: “It is not getting better.”
No studio received a grade of “Excellent” or “Good” from the organization. Universal—which fared best—received only an ”Insufficient,” with GLAAD citing Neighbors 2’s “unexpectedly well-handled subplot about former fraternity brother Pete [Dave Franco] getting engaged“ while also highlighting the “dated narratives” of Bridget Jones’s Baby and an “offensive and incredibly overdone” trope in Hail, Caesar!.
Meanwhile, Fox, Paramount, and Warner Bros. were deemed “Poor.” Though Paramount’s Star Trek Beyond represented a “huge step forward” with the introduction of Sulu’s husband, the studio also released Zoolander 2, which GLAAD notes had negative portrayals of non-binary and bisexual characters. “It is incredibly disheartening that this was the only trans or non-binary character included in a mainstream studio film this year,” GLAAD wrote, referring to Benedict Cumberbatch’s All. “This is one case in which we wish the character had been cut altogether.”
Finally, Sony, Disney, and Lionsgate were rated as “Failing.” Interestingly enough, both Disney and Lionsgate released movies in 2017—Beauty And The Beast and Power Rangers, respectively—where filmmakers touted the inclusion of an LGBTQ character.