Yes, we’re talking about Hollywood, where the top people can get up to $50-75mm for 6-9 months of work (this includes hitting the marketing trail), plus royalties for life, plus potential equity since most people that make that much these days want to get into producing (since getting old is bad for biz for actors, especially women).
Where one product is expected to make nine figures in 2-3 days. There aren’t many businesses where employees can make 50 million a year just in salary, without equity/stock options/endorsements. And most companies that expect to make 9 figures in 2-3 days from one product don’t rely primarily on 2-3 people to drive that, it usually takes a village in most businesses.
All this is to say, again, the stakes here are very high for the people making the decisions. This is not like an employee quota, where dozens, if not hundreds of employees are crucial to making the business profitable. In business the CEOs are paid a ton, but the CEO isn’t paid more than everyone else combined. That happens in Hollywood. The color of the star doesn’t matter if they make money and the execs look good.
If women and POC made the most money, they would get cast the most. The issue is the market where studio execs don’t take risks, and perhaps that white people are more interested in movies about white people, and they spend more money. But I’m not sure why that would be ‘bad’, when the whole argument here is around changing the status quo because POC are more interested in movies about POC.
To me, this bias is a byproduct of a unique market, but also consumer tastes that at best look to be tribal and at worst, racist. I would tackle this more by figuring out alternatives to a $30mm marketing budget, which is an industry change that would allow for more competition and IMO be good for the consumer, or trying hard to get black and female capital to fund great stories that wouldn’t otherwise get told.
To me, simply telling major studio execs who are afraid of losing their jobs not to make decisions based on the economic criteria that will keep their careers alive another day doesn’t seem like it’s going to work. Progress was definitely made in 2017-2018 toward righting some of the past wrongs, but it will take time to keep getting better.