Hollywood’s Anti-Black Bias Costs It $10 Billion a Year

FRANKLIN LEONARD

DAYS after a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, suffocated George Floyd and the video went viral, I watched my social media feed fill with blackout tiles and corporate publicity statements.

They poured in from every industry, proclaiming solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Hollywood — where I have worked for almost two decades — was no exception.

Far from offering relief, each new assertion by a talent agency, film studio, television network or streaming service that “silence is complicity” and that “we must do better” felt like a pinch of salt in a gaping wound. I found myself unable to ignore the gap between these meticulously workshopped platitudes and the daily words and actions I’ve witnessed in Hollywood, which reflect values I knew cost not only dollars but lives: How many movies like “Black Panther” have we not made? And more broadly, how many lives have we