A man walks up a flight of stairs to his apartment. As he puts the key in the door to enter, a pair of rabbit’s feet are thrown onto his welcome mat.
Whoever threw the rabbit’s feet is not yet seen. But we hear his off-camera voice: “You’re a hard man to find, Eric.”
Eric turns around with some trepidation and nervously responds, “Hey, I’ve been meaning to call you.”
The camera then reveals the cause of Eric’s angst: a bunny rabbit with two front peg legs. The bunny explains that he found the two rabbit’s feet in his mailbox so he decided to pay Eric “a little visit.”
Eric hesitatingly responds, “Just thought you might”–but he can’t complete the sentence.
The bunny does it for him–“Might what? Want them back.”
“Yes,” confirms Eric, at which point a supered message appears that reads: “You won’t need luck anymore.”
We are then introduced to Poker Wingman, an odds calculator that shows you when to call, fold or raise “so you’ll win more online poker.”
This darkly humored, offbeat spot was directed by Detroit (formerly known as the directing team of Woods+Low) of production house OPC, Toronto, directly for the client. The DP was James Gardner.
USC Annenberg Report: Female Protagonists Reach Parity With Men In Top-Grossing Films Of 2024
For the first time in recent history, the percentage of top-grossing films featuring female protagonists equaled the percentage of films with male protagonists, according to a pair of annual studies released Tuesday.
Movies like "Wicked,""Inside Out 2" and "The Substance" lifted Hollywood's theatrical releases to gender parity in leading roles in 2024. Of the 100 top domestic grossing films in 2024, 42% had female protagonists, and 42% had male protagonists, according to a report issued by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.
The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which also released its annual study Tuesday, found that 54% of the top 100 films at the box office in 2024 featured girls and women as protagonists. That's a massive jump from just the year prior, when 30% of films featured women in lead roles. In 2007, when the USC annual study began, that figure was just 20%.
"This is the first time we can say that gender equality has been reached in top-grossing films," Stacy L. Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, said in a statement.
"In 2024, three of the top five films had a girl or woman in a leading role, as did five of the top 10 films — including the number one film of the year, Disney's 'Inside Out 2,'" added Smith. "We have always known that female-identified leads would make money. This is not the result of an economic awakening but is due to a number of different constituencies and efforts — at advocacy groups, at studios, through DEI initiatives — to assert the need for equality on screen."
Other metrics suggested the gains in leading roles masked still-endemic disparity throughout Hollywood. The percentage of female characters in speaking roles... Read More