Oscar nominations are out, and this year #OscarsSoWhite became a hashtag: all actors nominated were white and all directors nominated were males. This visualization focuses on the diversity of the highest grossing movies released in 2014, not just on the Oscar nominees, because to me, that's where the problem really starts. If there aren't enough strong roles for minorities in movies at large, then it is impossible to expect nominations from these performances.

This viz classifies a movie as diverse if it features a minority actor in either a lead or a supporting role, but classifies it as female for lead roles only. The definition of a supporting vs. lead actor is vague, so my working definition is based on the top five first-billed actors. In other words, if a picture had a minority in its top five first-billed cast, then it made it into the designated circle for the race of the cast member. This means that the viz will technically label a movie as diverse even if 4 of the 5 lead actors were white, and the movie will appear in multiple circles. It's not a perfect metric, but I think having strong supporting characters played by minorities is a step towards progress so I wanted to label those films as diverse. If you can't think of the diverse character in the film, just click on the movie’s title and check out its IMDB cast list. Note that this visualization does not dive deep into specifics of bi-racial actors, and labels a film as diverse even if the actor was merely a voice for a parrot in an Animation feature, or had green skin color in the film (cue Zoe Saldana in Guardians of the Galaxy), or even if the minority actors and actresses played evil villains, such as was the case for most movies featuring Asians.

On the flip side of this argument, there are film studios spending millions to fund these titles, with a lot to lose if the picture turns out a bust and no one ever goes to see it because it stars a diverse Batman. Moviegoers vote which movies get made each time they shell out $10.25 at the theater; these massive revenues are coming from the public’s pockets. The question of what is at the root the diversity problem, culture or producers, ends up being analogous to the chicken or the egg conundrum.

The Academy Award nominations have a long history of being anti-blockbuster, and while some may consider the highest grossing films of any given year to be layman's films, it turns out that five out of the six Oscar-nominated features released in 2014 made the list. From the remaining three of the eight total films nominated, two would have possibly made the list had they also been released in 2014. This viz does not address the issue of those who think that diverse films were made but were snubbed, but it hopefully shines light on the huge diversity problem in film. Because even in this case, most of the films featuring minority leads missed the mark, receiving a rating average .5 lower than the movies with white leads.