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Maybe that's true, I'm not much for the movies or Hollywood. But I'd then say that there is a dire lack of actually attractive 'prominent Hollywood actresses' right now.
Hollywood has been ethnically cleansing its movies of redheads for a while now. A quick Google search will reveal that there is plenty of discussion on the topic. If there hasn't been any hubub in 'recent years' then it would only be because it's an old culture war that was has been completely lost by 'team red'. More and more of those.
Over time one would expect the red headed population of the United States to decline (excepting further mass immigration from Scotland and Ireland), surely?
I'm failing to see the relevance. The decline of the total red headed population in the country would not need to have any bearing on how Hollwood casts a comic book character drawn in the 1950's. If anything it would seem like a great opportunity to represent a desperately underrepresented minority.
Are redheads actually underrepresented? I think there was a brief period in the mid-20th century when a combination of Irish and Jewish (both have disproportionately red hair for whites) overrepresentation among actors, coupled with a desire to cast striking or diverse-looking (but still white) characters led to a huge overrepresentation of redheads. This was the phase where you might want to cast a group of three (white) girls, for example, but you didn’t want two blondes or two brunettes so the audience didn’t get confused, so you’d cast a redhead even though only 2% of the population had it (and even fewer had the really ginger phenotype).
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The ginger genocide (aside: this phenomenon + the anagram is probably the strongest evidence for the simulation hypothesis I've encountered) is a fair point, but my perception of this is that even the very phenomenon is little known outside of fairly niche circles of people who pay attention to this kind of thing, and even those who know don't often realize that this is endemic in the industry, with Zendaya's MJ being just one example. It's not nothing, but I don't recall it rising to even the level of Tilda Swinton's Ancient One in Doctor Strange (aside: any sort of race/sex swapping is justified if it's to get Tilda Swinton to play the character), much less, say, Ariel from The Little Mermaid (another example of the ginger genocide! And generally talked about on its own instead of part of the larger trend). Maybe MJ's case is due to the complete victory by one side, but honestly I thought it was more like Nick Fury where people just didn't care much since it's a supporting character whose race isn't much of a factor in the story.
Nick Fury was cast by Samuel L Jackson due to a version of the Comic having the character be a blatant Samuel L Jackson expy.
Jackson then basically went 'I get to play him in any movies that happen and won't sue'.
And here you are.
The original character of Nick Fury was white, but when he was effectively 'recast' was before alot of the culture war blew up in a big way, so it was seen more of a 'huh, neat' among comic circles than an active purging of whites.
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