Why are we seeing a backslide in diversity in Hollywood?
Hollywood may be celebrating "KPop Demon Hunters" and "Sinners," but the erasure of the Filipino roots in "Hexed" means the fight for representation is far from over
A recent UCLA report shows that Hollywood has seen a decrease in films with leading BIPOC actors.
aslysun/Shutterstock.com
Words by Andy Crump
When Jared Bush, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ chief creative officer, announced director Josie Trinidad’s Hexed last year at the company’s annual Destination D23 expo event, the original outline given for the movie centered on a teenage boy who develops magical powers, a’la Harry Potter, but with his roots sold as distinctly Filipino. Trinidad being Filipino American, the cultural context made sense and gave the project a sense of newness—a familiar narrative influenced by the mores of a heritage infrequently seen on a big screen.
Then, at Disney’s CinemaCon presentation in April, the news came down that Trinidad had been demoted to co-director, subordinate to Fawn Veerasunthorn and Jason Hand, who was credited as director alongside Trinidad at the original D23 announcement. The film’s logline received an overhaul, too, gender swapping the protagonist from a boy to a girl, though the most baffling change in a veritable ocean of them was the apparent quiet removal of the Filipino element (especially given that the studio hired Hailee Steinfeld, who has Filipino roots, to star). To date, nobody representing Disney has commented on the matter, because the optics are bad enough without the company acknowledging them, but take a look at the trailer and judge for yourself whether any footage displayed carries even a trace amount of Filipino identity.
Grant the possibility that Filipino identity may remain woven in Hexed’s DNA despite the overhauls to its directing team, and that the film will make all suspicions about its excision look very silly come its Thanksgiving release date. That this question can be raised at all dovetails with indicators regarding Hollywood’s 2026 standing on subject of diversity, which may surprise folks who observe the industry with blinders firmly on; to some, the case of representation in media appears closed in consideration of KPop Demon Hunters’ runaway success in 2025. A wildly popular and commercially fruitful movie focused on three BIPOC female characters, voiced by two actresses apiece in dialogue and in song, co-directed by a woman to boot? Pack up the protest signs and head home gang: the battle’s won.
Not to belittle KPop Demon Hunters’ value or whatever future impact it’s to have on the industry, but if the cream of the 2025 crop, up to and including that movie’s wins at the 98th Academy Awards, as well as wins by Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, looks good enough as to tickle the palette, the realities simmering beneath are somewhat more sour. Last year was a profound down year for representation on screens, a sobering fact captured on UCLA’s recent Hollywood Diversity Report. Split into two distinct reports, one for streaming, the other for theatrical, we see more significant losses in the former report in the film leads, writers, and directors departments for BIPOC talent, at a rate of less than two to one. The gains in the latter report tell a slightly rosier story for BIPOC writers, directors, and total actors, for female writers, and for actors with known disabilities at a rate of greater than two to one across the board—though it’s a reach to measure the combined weight of both and claim progress.
Still from Disney's new "Hexed."
Courtesy of Disney
This makes a streaming release like KPop Demon Hunters and a theatrical release like Sinners feel nearly like table scraps, a characterization that suits neither movie in any other context. Quibbles with creative and structural choices aside, these are exciting, fresh artistic visions, building off of the traditions of their mediums and mores of their genres as only their authors could have. We’ve seen a thousand vampire movies before, but none with Sinners’ period textures and conflicts; we’ve seen 80s and 90s schlock fests about rock stars slugging it out with monsters, a la Wild Zero (1999) and Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare (1987), but no entry in that niche has the grace of KPop Demon Hunters (to say nothing of it being an extension of anime’s magical girl subgenre). Put succinctly, these films are one of a kind. Thinking of them in meager terms is incongruous with their accolades and their levels of recognition.
But projects like these make up a microcosm in the Hollywood macrocosm, overseen by studio executives and producers broadly terrified of ideas that are either unconventional or simply strange. In their calculus, unknown quantities risk viewers’ neglect, so instead of green-lighting original movies, the people in charge of the business insist on financing incumbent generations’ hand-me-downs. As such, 2025’s dip in diversity only comes as a surprise in contrast to gains made since 2022. The movies are backsliding.
The reasons why are, or at least could be, myriad. If the country is likewise backsliding in the area of civil rights under the Republican administration’s various authoritarian dictates, then it stands to reason that its other components might themselves experience a backslide in equality. For Hollywood’s stereotyped reputation as a degenerate liberal bastion, it is still, in the end, a money-grubbing corporate hellscape where little’s more important than bottom lines. The mildest hint that diversity is financially virulent—“go woke, go broke,” brayed apoplectic transphobes in the 2023 Budweiser controversy—is enough to send the studio system into DEFCON 1 and put a muzzle on representation in its productions. (Maybe it’s more correct to think of this system as a hive mind and not a defense system, but we digress.)
To explain the rewrites and new hires on Hexed as a consequence of the United States’ current equality dilemmas—spanning voting rights, humanitarianism, and citizenship laws—would require making a few leaps, of course. Connecting the dots between the lead’s shift in gender, as well as the muted Filipino connection, and the cresting tide of American white supremacy takes more information than presently available. But it’s likewise naive to imagine that the collision of Hexed’s last minute changes with UCLA’s reports is merely coincidental to this political moment.
Published on August 21, 2026
Words by Andy Crump
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers movies, beer, music, fatherhood, and way too many other subjects for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours: Paste Magazine, Inverse, The New York Times, Hop Culture, Polygon, and Men's Health, plus more. You can follow him on Bluesky and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65 percent craft beer.