CSS AIR 2.5 Report

CSS sought to examine Authentically Inclusive Representation (AIR) among top movies as measured by US opening weekend box office earnings. For this project, we collected data on the highest-grossing movies released in 2022 and added them to our data from our previous report evaluating top movies from 2010-2019 to determine whether our prior findings hold with the addition of more recent data. The final total sample of movies with AIR scores was made up of 146 titles with 30% of titles from 2022. As in our past study, we asked advocacy organizations to assess these movies for AIR.

This report also highlights case studies of selected movies to provide holistic insight into titles that scored highly on AIR. Our findings from this follow-up highlight the value of continuing this research to understand the full scale of AIR, which we plan to do in the coming year.

1. In this year’s survey, every point increase in Authentically Inclusive Representation (AIR) was significantly associated with an increase in opening weekend box office earnings by an average of $18.82M for large budget movies among top movies assessed from 2010-2019 and including additional data from 2022.

2. Every point increase in AIR is significantly associated with an increase in Rotten Tomatoes critic and audience scores on average. Every point increase in AIR is significantly associated with a 2.7 point increase in Rotten Tomatoes audience scores on average. Every point increase in AIR is significantly associated with a 6.4 point increase Rotten Tomatoes critic review scores on average.