Toys aren’t us: why female superheroes are grounded
Women in Hollywood get a tough enough deal as ordinary humans, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent, but now we learn that their prospects of getting to be superheroes are even worse. That’s because new research has shown that superhero toys – from which the studios make much of their profits – sell better if they’re male.
The studios certainly seem to have have taken this research to heart, as screenwriter Shane Black recently revealed. He told an interviewer that the supervillain in his first draft of Iron Man 3 (2013) had in fact been female, but that the suits at “Marvel corporate” were having none of it: the villain had to be male. “We had to change the entire script,” lamented Black, “because of toy-making.” The film went on to become the tenth highest-grossing of all time.
Disney, which owns Marvel Studios, has form in this regard. The action figures for its latest Star Wars movie, for example, were overwhelmingly male characters; only a few evoked the heroine, Rey. Marvel boss Kevin Feige still insists he’s keen to make a superhero movie with a female lead, said Alice Vincent in The Daily Telegraph, but it’s studio rivals DC who will be first to put their money where their mouth is. They plan to release their Wonder Woman movie next year, whereas Marvel’s first female-led film, Captain Marvel, won’t reach cinemas until 2019.