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Latinos who are striving to build careers in entertainment need to embrace a “F— you” mentality. That was one of the sentiments that emerged from a salon dinner discussion held Tuesday evening in Beverly Hills with
about 20 senior industry insiders. The subject was how to make the business case in the C-suites that Hollywood is losing money by largely ignoring the U.S. Latino population in mainstream movies and TV series.
The event was hosted by the Latino Donor Collaborative, a nonprofit advocacy group. As strongly articulated by one participant, a “f— you mentality” means being willing to go to extraordinary lengths to create content and build careers outside of the traditional studio and network system, in the tradition of media entrepreneurs ranging from Tyler Perry to Oprah Winfrey to Robert Rodriguez to Ted Turner.
LDC has once again teamed with consulting giant McKinsey & Co.for its annual report on the status of Latino representation at all levels of the entertainment industry. The just-published report goes deep on proprietary research done through McKinsey to examine the U.S. Latino audience and its impact on box office results, TV ratings and the influence of the cohort’s consumer purchasing power, estimated at some $2.8 trillion.
The report concludes that Latino consumers typically account for about $20 million in box office for mainstream movie hits. The analysis concludes that studios could reap as much as $20 million to $40 million more per title with what the report calls “a focused strategy” to incorporate Latino talent and characters into storylines. The report notes that a Latino-focused blockbuster action movie could generate as much as $600 million, based on the moviegoing habits of young U.S. Latino consumers.
Latino participation in Hollywood is generally measured in single-digit percentages. LDC, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Nosotros and myriad other organizations have chronicled the woefully low levels of employment for Latino actors, writers, directors, producers and executives at decision-making levels let alone having greenlight authority.
One issue that the LDC report zeroes in on this year is the fact that Latino audiences are often taken for granted because they are typically such enthusiastic consumers of entertainment and pop culture.
“They already behave exactly the way this business model needs them to,” Ana Valdez, president and CEO of LDC president, writes in the report, “2026 Strategic Roadmap for the Entertainment Industry.” “They spend 55.8% of their TV time on streaming compared to 47.3% for the total U.S. population. They lean into ad-supported platforms and respond to advertising when the stories reflect who they are. Sixty percent [of U.S. Latinos] say that streaming ads are more relevant to them than those targeting the general population. Forty-four percent pay more attention to ads while streaming. Sixty-four percent pay more attention when they see accurate representation. They also take action after exposure: searching, clicking, and visiting websites.”
All of this activity allowed McKinsey & Co. to run models to estimate how a modest amount of inclusion for Latino characters, culture, creatives and executives could boost bottom-line results. Of course, movies and TV shows are not widgets and washing machines, and results of any finished product varies widely depending on a host of factors. But there’s enough data and computational tools out there for McKinsey to dig deep with some reasonable assumptions. In McKinsey’s model, a successful blockbuster four-quadrant film franchise a la Marvel’s path-breaking “Black Panther” films could reasonably be expected to bring in $600 million or more in “annual upside” to a studio, the report states.
The total tally of missed revenue opportunities across film, TV and other platforms is as much as $12 billion-$18 billion.
“The only way to deliver results at scale is to create content that accurately represents consumers and speaks to the target audience, driving measurable consumption growth in the United States,” per McKinsey’s analysis cited in the LDC report. “Hollywood leaves roughly $12 billion–$18 billion in annual revenue on the table by underrepresenting Latinos on- and off-screen, creating a direct, fixable gap between audience reality and what gets made.”
The salon dinner held Tuesday at the Peninsula Beverly Hills was organized under Chatham House meeting rules, which allow participants to speak freely with the understanding that they will not be identified nor directly quoted in any subsequent public discussion of what was shared in the room.
The participants expressed familiar complaints. The lack of Latino decision-makers in positions of authority makes it an uphill climb to get culturally specific projects into the pipeline at major networks and studios. The brick wall of unconscious bias means that creative executives and leaders who aren’t familiar with Latino culture are less likely to take a chance on an emerging writer or director.
There was, not surprisingly, a lively thread of conversation about the potential for talented creatives to build careers and businesses via YouTube and other social media platforms that have significantly flattened the barriers to entry to content distribution. The next generation of YouTube trained filmmakers have announced themselves in a big way this year with the success of low-budget horror films from Gen Z helmers Curry Barker, who birthed “Obsession,” and Kane Parsons, the creative eye behind the buzzy “Backrooms.”
Where are the Latino superstars on YouTube? In a round-the-table survey, insiders who are keyed in to the pulse of pop culture acknowledged that no immediate names that jump to mind. But for sure, the talent is out there, honing their craft and building fan bases post by post, participants agreed. Will capital and infrastructure follow for Latino talent in the way that it has flowed to wildly successful digital entrepreneurs such as MrBeast, Dhar Mann, Jay Shetty or Alex Cooper? There was discussion of what it would take to rally investors to create the infrastructure to support the development of people and projects. Or as one participant described it, building that ladder that allows talent to scale the wall and bring proven concepts to the table.
But as much as YouTube and other platforms offer compelling alternatives for development and distribution, there was a discernable sense among the room of producers, executives, analysts and lawyers that the biggest goal is to achieve meaningful progress in the heart of traditional Hollywood. That means greater inclusion for Latinos across studios, networks, streamers, talent agencies, law firms, marketing agencies, PR firms and other support services that drive the industry.
The LDC is frank in all of its presentations that its focus is not on social justice for a long underrepresented ademographic in the U.S. The organization’s frustration is magnified by its conviction that the biggest players in entertainment are missing a wide-open market opportunity. “This is not about DEI, it’s about P&L” has been the LDC’s motto since the it was founded in 2010 by Sol Trujillo, former CEO of telco heavyweights U.S. West, Orange S.A. and Telstra;and Henry Cisneros, former Mayor of San Antonio and head of the Housing and Urban Development department during the Clinton administration.
“Representation is not a nice-to-have; it unlocks revenue,” the LDC report states. “Hispanic [connected] TV users report higher ad relevance and attention when representation is accurate, and they are more likely to take action after exposure. In ad-supported environments, that is the difference between a CPM that clears and one that doesn’t. McKinsey’s estimate of $12 billion to $18 billion in annual upside from addressing underrepresentation quantifies the gap between today’s mix and tomorrow’s P&L.”
