Last week I looked at the popularity of various first names in movies over the past two decades. The process involved building up a vast database of acting credits, noting both the gender of the fictional role and of the performer representing them on screen. This led to some readers getting in touch to ask...
TLDR: “Across all genres, a woman at the helm meant more acting roles for women.”
This guy’s articles are worth the read though - it’s from him that I found out that the vast majority (over 90%) of directors never get to make more than one film. Of the remaining 10%, the chance of making another go down with each film, unless you’re part of the small group of outliers - the few dudes who are able to regularly output stuff.
I wonder if you only look at directors of films >$50M if that number would be higher. I feel like there are probably a bunch of randos that make a $300k movie and never do anything again.
I think that’s part of it. I imagine many of those randos did actually want to make another film though.
The death of the mid-budget movie is probably a contributing factor - either you’re shooting on your phone, or suddenly you’re supposed to helm a blockbuster, with few stepping stones in between.