With films including “Love Lies Bleeding” and “Queer,” A24 was the only studio to earn a “good” grade from GLAAD for its 2024 slate
On Wednesday, the advocacy group released its annual Studio Responsibility Index. The study hands out “pass” or “fail” grades to individual movies based on whether they have essential and non-stereotyped LGBTQ characters. (Aka the Vito Russo test, so named after the late “Celluloid Closet” author and activist.) The index also rates studios as a whole which are graded on a six point scale: Excellent, Good, Fair, Insufficient, Poor or Failing.
No studios received an “excellent” rating, the top of the SRI scale. After A24’s “good” rating, Amazon and NBCUniversal received a “fair” rating, while all other studios received a “poor” or “insufficient” rating.
Despite receiving 13 Oscar nominations, the Netflix musical “Emilia Pérez” was slammed as “a case study in what not to do when it comes to trans storytelling.” GLAAD called the streamer’s decision to buy and heavily promote the film, which is about a Mexican cartel boss who becomes a trans woman, “extremely disappointing,” and shows “just how much more education needs to be done with Hollywood film executives.”
Overall, queer films dipped to 23.6% of films across major studio releases, a statistic that GLAAD President & CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis said was a “wake-up call to the industry.”
Ellis said in a statement, “At a time when LGBTQ people are facing unprecedented attacks in politics and news media, film must be a space for visibility and truth. Representation isn’t about checking a box — it’s about whose stories get told, whose lives are valued, and creating worlds that mirror our own society today.”
The report analyzed nine major studios besides A24: Amazon, Apple TV+, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount Global, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, including their subsidiary distribution labels and majority-owned streaming services.
Among the films that passed the Vito Russo Test were Paramount’s “Mean Girls,” Amazon’s “My Old Ass,” Focus Feature’s “Drive-Away Dolls,” Apple’s “Fancy Dance,” Disney and Hulu’s “Prom Dates” and Netflix’s “Good Grief.”
The alliance praised Netflix’s BAFTA-winning trans documentary “Will and Harper,” but noted they do not include documentaries when preparing their yearly report.
Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II,” which strongly implied that Denzel Washington’s Roman politician enjoyed the company of men as well as women, was singled out for not embracing the subtext, and “the contentious media cycle” where Washington said a scene where he kissed a man was cut, while Scott denied that a scene like that had ever been filmed.
You can read the entire report here.
Editor’s note: The original version of this story did not correctly Cite GLAAD’s use of its Vito Russo Test (detailed here). The article has been updated for accuracy.
