Female-led films ‘top box office’
And now, for a revelation that probably shouldn’t be a revelation: Audiences like movies starring women and will show up and pay money to see them.
A new study has found that films starring women do better at box offices worldwide, despite how the film industry continues to favour men. The study, a joint effort between Creative Arts Agency and tech company shift7, looked at the 350 highest-grossing US films released between January 2014 and December 2017 and found that films with women billed as the lead actor made more money — blockbusters and lowbudget movies alike.
“Women comprise half the box office, yet there has been an assumption in the industry that female-led films were generally less successful,” said C.A.A. agent Christy Haubegger, who assisted in the study. “We found data that does not support that assumption.”
The partnership for the study came through Time’s Up, an organisation working to fight sexual harassment and inequality in Hollywood. Researchers examined budget data for films through Gracenote, a software company that compiles data on the entertainment industry. The study included films with budgets of under US$10 million to above US$100m. Films qualified as female-led if a woman was listed first in promotional materials, billing blocks and credits. Of the 350 films in the study, 105 were led by women.
Some of the films in the study included Trolls (starring Anna Kendrick), Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot).
Researchers also found that movies that passed the Bechdel test — popularised by Alison Bechdel’s 1985 comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For that refers to a film that features two women who talk to each other about something other than a man — also made more money than ones that didn’t pass. While it might seem like a low bar at first glance, 40 per cent of the films in the study missed that mark. Among recent hits that flunked the Bechdel test: Bohemian
Rhapsody, Burning and Deadpool 2. Conversely, every movie in the study that grossed more than US$1 billion in the global box office passed the Bechdel test. The majority of these movies were family blockbusters, including Jurassic World, Finding Dory, Beauty and the Beast and Star Wars’ Rogue One, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
The reckoning of #MeToo and Time’s Up have elicited demands for change in an industry marked by sexism, racism and inequality. But despite public promises to improve representation, and the success of films like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians, which broke box office records with minority-led casts, the status quo remains. A study from San Diego State University found that the number of female protagonists in the top-performing 100 films fell 5 per cent in 2017.
In July, researchers at the University of Southern California Annenberg School released a study on more than 1100 popular films in the past 10 years and found that little progress had been made in inclusion, despite public pressure. Across the board, popular films lacked women and minorities, both on-screen and behind the camera. Female speaking characters comprised 30 per cent of roles in the study’s 11-year window; in the top 100 movies in that time frame, less than 30 per cent of roles were filled by minorities. “Those expecting a banner year for inclusion will be disappointed,” Stacy Smith, lead researcher on the study, said.
“This is powerful proof that audiences want to see everyone represented on screen,” said Pascal Pictures chief Amy Pascal, who helped helm the study.
“Decision-makers in Hollywood need to pay attention to this.”