New GLAAD Report Shows Sharp Drop in LGBTQ+ Representation at the Movies

At a time when demonizing political rhetoric soars along anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes, and corporations increasingly abandon Pride events, Hollywood is backing away from queer representation in films, a new GLAAD survey shows.

"The 13th annual edition of GLAAD's Studio Responsibility Index found the number of inclusive films had fallen for the second year running," The Hollywood Reporter relayed.

"The LGBTQ advocacy organization found 59 films out of 250 contained an LGBTQ character (or 23.6 percent) in 2024," THR added.

That's a sharp reduction from the 2022 high-water mark of "100 films out of 350 (or 28.5 percent)" in 2022, the writeup noted. It's also part of a downward trend, since representation in 2023's slate of movies weighed in at "70 out of 256 films (or 27.3 percent)" – also less than 2022, but significantly more than 2024. If plotted on a graph, the difference over the last few years would show a precipitous drop.

It's not just the sheer number of films which feature LGBTQ+ people that are shrinking; it's also the screen time devoted to queer characters.

"While the previous edition showed increased screen time for LGBTQ characters," GLAAD noted of the 2025 report on 2024's films, "this year's findings show a disappointing flip with the largest group of LGBTQ characters appearing in roles with less than one minute of total screen time."

GLAAD called out the cultural and political significance of Hollywood's turning away from the LGBTQ+ community, noting, "In a time when the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community faces unchecked harmful and false rhetoric in news media and are treated as a wedge issue by politicians, these stories are vital."

At first glance, representation by company was not only markedly variable, but possibly telling. The study broke down representation in movies according to who released them, and found that A24, which has forged a reputation for high-quality cinema, led the industry, "as 9 of its 16 films last year, or 56 percent, were judged LGBTQ inclusive," THR explained. A24's release schedule last year included high-profile queer cinema like the Kristen Stewart-starring "Love Lies Bleeding" and Luca Guadagnino's "Queer."

"Amazon and NBCUniversal got 'fair' ratings" from the survey, THR recounted, "while Warner Bros. Discovery, Apple TV+, Sony and Paramount Global received 'insufficient' marks." GLAAD did take note of NBCUniversal's comedic lesbian thriller "Drive Away Dolls," Amazon's Aubrey Plaza-starring "My Old Ass," and Paramount's "Mean Girls" remake, but those films were the exceptions to the rule.

Lagging behind, surprisingly, were Netflix – which, at once point, seemed a champion of LGBTQ+-inclusive fare, in part because of a years-long deal with prolific out producer Ryan Murphy – and Walt Disney, which has long frustrated audiences by teasing queer-inclusive or even queer-centric movies, only for those themes to be watered down or left on the cutting room floor. In one recent example, Pixar executives insisted that the film "Inside Out 2" be stripped of any suggestion that its protagonist, a teenage girl, might be a lesbian, and reportedly blamed a fleeting same-sex kiss on the poor performance of another animated film, "Lightyear." (In fairness to cinematic same-sex snogs, critics of "Lightyear" pointed to a host of shortcomings that had nothing to do with the kiss; Slate's review called "Lightyear" "a commercially motivated attempt to reverse-engineer the piece of disposable mass culture that inspired that product in the first place.")

THR noted that "only two of the 59 films tracked in 2024 had transgender roles – Universal's 'Monkey Man,' where Indian actor Vipin Sharma played Alpha, the leader of a trans community known in India as hijras, and Netflix's 'Emilia Pérez,' which co-starred the Oscar-nominated Karla Sofía Gascón."

Perhaps not coincidentally, the transgender community has come in for the most intense legislative attacks in recent years, and transgender Americans continue to be villainized by right-wing pundits and politicians.

"The report is intended to serve as a road map toward increasing fair, accurate and inclusive LGBTQ representation in film," GLAAD said in introductory comments to the survey, but it's unclear at this point if Hollywood is interested in following any such map, as opposed to focusing on the political winds of the moment.