Only 4 of the top 100 movies of 2016 were directed by women

Ongoing figures are in for the highest-grossing movies of 2016. You can check out the details of the top 20 here, or head to Box Office Mojo for the full 100.

Of those that had the highest box office takings worldwide - only four were directed by women.

And of the top 30 highest-grossing films, that figure was reduced to a mighty zero.

The highest-grossing movie directed by a woman last year was Bridget Jones's Baby made by Sharon Maguire, which has the 35th biggest worldwide box office at $212m.

Right behind that is Thea Sharrock's romantic weepie Me Before You, which took $207.9 to land 36th.

Then much further down the chart comes Jodie Foster's thriller Money Monster at number 72, which took $93.3m, while the last of the four is Miracles from Heaven at 84, a Christian drama directed by Patricia Riggen and starring Jennifer Garner, which took $73.9m

That's compared to 2015's top 100, which included a whopping seven films directed by women... though it's an improvement on 2014, which boasted an embarrassingly low two.

The numbers are so small that it doesn't feel meaningful to talk about it in terms of increases and decreases, more that there is clearly still massive under representation.

We know that women do go to the cinema, however - a 2015 MPAA study put it at 51% of the North American population, so it's sad that they're so under-represented behind the camera.

We're tentatively hopeful for 2017 however, with Patty Jenkins's Wonder Woman, Lucia Aniello's Rock That Body starring Kate McKinnon and Scarlett Johansson, Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled, Pitch Perfect 3 from Trish Sie, and Lady Bird from Greta Gerwig all headed our way, as well as plenty of promising indies which might just sneak into the list.

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