Cracking the Code: Lionsgate Studio's Ongoing Pursuit of the Latinx Audience

Abstract

Within film industry discourses, U.S. Latinxs are said to be important to the future of Hollywood due to their sheer size and buying power. However, Latinxs remain underrepresented both in front of and behind the camera. Focusing on Lionsgate as a case study, I examine how studio executives have discursively constructed the “Latino audience” and the degree to which this construction allows for films that are oppositional to hegemonic narratives. I ground my analysis in critical political economy and base my findings on a review of Lionsgate's internal and public facing documents, industry reports, and press coverage of Lionsgate's Latino initiatives. I argue that, as a discursive construction, the Latino audience has two defining characteristics. First, they are a market to be exploited rather than a public to be served. Second, studios have been incentivized to conceptualize U.S. Latinxs as part of a transnational market, which imagines the audience as residents of some other nation. Finally, I argue that this conceptualization of the audience limits the resources invested in Latinx films and the kind of counter-hegemonic discourses which Latinx filmmakers can engage.