(Stephen Follows) I studied the career paths of 1,765 directors of top-grossing movies in order to discover what led them to the coveted directors chair.
I have received a few questions from readers about the path to becoming a top movie director, prompted by a recent Substack post entitled “The Annenberg Ouroboros” by Hollywood Gadfly.
The article critiques the work of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which studies the gender of top-grossing directors, the festival circuit, animation, visual effects, and more. Hollywood Gadfly raised several objections to their work and methodology, including whether it is fair to treat the gap between the share of women directing at Sundance and the share directing top-grossing films as evidence of a broken pipeline.
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