1 Screen saviours
After a poor season at the box office, Hollywood is changing its focus to female heroines, writes
Hollywood is turning to female action heroes after a disastrous northern summer at the box office. Traditional male-led, big-budget productions targeted at young men, such as Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, failed to ignite. Now a series of blockbusters dominated by women are being planned, including new versions of Ghostbusters and The Expendables, in which all the leading characters will be female.
Hollywood is turning to female action heroes after a disastrous summer at the box office. Traditional male-led, big-budget productions targeted at young men, such as Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow, and
The Amazing Spider-Man 2, failed to ignite. Now a series of blockbusters dominated by women are being planned, including new versions of Ghostbusters and The Expendables, in which all the leading characters will be female.
It comes as summer takings across North America fell by nearly 20 per cent from the same period last year.
One cause appears to have been the increasing popularity of video games among young men, leading to them staying away from cinemas.
Among the few successful big-budget summer superhero films was Guardians of
the Galaxy, which took US$94 million ($111 million) in its opening weekend this month, mainly thanks to its popularity with women.
Unusually for such a film, 44 per cent of the audience was female, the highest figure for one of the many films based on Marvel comic book characters.
Guardians of the Galaxy also had the rare distinction of being a superhero film written by a woman and studio executives are keen to capitalise on the trend.
They have also been spurred on by the summer success of Lucy, in which Scarlett Johansson plays a character who develops superhuman powers.
The film trounced its rival Hercules, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, when they opened in the same week, and 50 per cent of the audience for Lucy was female.
As a result, Johansson may be given the opportunity to star as the superhero Black Widow in a stand-alone blockbuster — she played the character as a supporting role in male-led action films including The
Avengers.
In the 100 biggest grossing movies of last year, only 15 per cent of the protagonists were female — worse than a decade earlier.
In 2016, Wonder Woman will also be brought to the big screen, played by the Israeli actress Gal Gadot, in Batman v
Superman. The character may get top billing in her own film after that.
Another blockbuster based on an as yet unnamed female character from the
Spider-Man comic book story is also reportedly planned for 2017.
The all-female version of the hugely successful Expendables films, which have featured Sylvester Stallone and other male action stars, begins filming next year.
Stallone, speaking at a premiere last week, confirmed the film, which has the title The Expendabelles, is going ahead. A guessing game has begun over who will play the female roles with potential names including Cameron Diaz, Mila Jovovich, Zoe Saldana and Meryl Streep.
The new Ghostbusters film is an update of the 1980s productions. Paul Fieg, known for directing female buddy comedies
Bridesmaids and The Heat, will take charge. Amid criticism from some quarters, he said: “Interesting how making a movie with men in the lead roles is normal but making a movie with women in the lead roles is a ‘gimmick’. It’s 2014.”
However, a study this year found the proportion of female characters in Hollywood films is still low. In the 100 biggest grossing movies of last year, only 15 per cent of the protagonists were female — worse than a decade earlier.
Female actors made up only 30 per cent of all the speaking roles in those films.
Study author Martha Lauzen, of the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, said: “Overall, we have seen little movement in the numbers of female protagonists and females as speaking characters over the last decade. Moreover, female characters are less likely than males to have identifiable goals or to be portrayed as leaders of any kind.”
Hollywood has long been bracing for impact at the cinema as audiences turn elsewhere for entertainment, for example to on-demand internet streaming services. The poor summer saw takings at the North American box office down 30 per cent in July alone.