According to Tyler Perry, the producer of Precious, all-black casts are dying out. In a blog on his official site, the writer/director/actor wrote that black ensembles were "on the verge of becoming extinct", and he was lucky to have found a studio that saw the value in his "type of storytelling". In films such as Why Did I Get Married? and Diary of a Mad Black Woman, his type of storytelling marries the sentimental gloop of Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, Valentine's Day) to the soap operatics of Aaron "Dynasty" Spelling, and always with the same message – that a black woman struggling through adversity will triumph in the end.

Perry has been criticised by people including Spike Lee for reinforcing racial stereotypes (a reccurring character in his films is Madea, a big-hearted, but ornery grandma figure played by Perry in drag), but perhaps his biggest crime is an artistic one. For almost a decade he has been largely making the same low-brow film over and over again. Not only is this self-created genre looking increasingly tired, but Perry's analysis of Hollywood casting comes at a time when there is actually a rise in the number of black casts in mainstream films.

These include George Lucas' second world war drama Red Tails, They Die By Dawn (a western starring Idris Elba) and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (another western, with a mixed cast led by Jamie Foxx). Most forward-thinking though is Dear White People, the debut feature from Justin Simien, which seems to herald a new wave of savvy, African American filmmakers. In the trailer, a member of the all-black cast announces to camera, "Forget Hollywood, forget Tyler Perry!" before her friend, who is bemoaning the lack of diversity in the genre, asks a cinema usher: "Can we get a film with 'characters', instead of stereotypes, wrapped in Christian dogma?"