  In the last decades, global awareness towards the importance of diverse
representation has been increasing. Lack of diversity and discrimination toward
minorities did not skip the film industry. Here, we examine ethnic bias in the
film industry through commercial posters, the industry's primary advertisement
medium for decades. Movie posters are designed to establish the viewer's
initial impression. We developed a novel approach for evaluating ethnic bias in
the film industry by analyzing nearly 125,000 posters using state-of-the-art
deep learning models. Our analysis shows that while ethnic biases still exist,
there is a trend of reduction of bias, as seen by several parameters.
Particularly in English-speaking movies, the ethnic distribution of characters
on posters from the last couple of years is reaching numbers that are
approaching the actual ethnic composition of US population. An automatic
approach to monitor ethnic diversity in the film industry, potentially
integrated with financial value, may be of significant use for producers and
policymakers.
