According to new reports by CAA and tech firm Shift7, casting women as leads in films at all budget levels offers a significant box office boost compared with male-led films. In other words, comments sections aren’t always an accurate representation of real life.
Analyzing 350 films released between January 2014 and December 2017, the companies determined that 105 of them billed women first. And, across five budget categories, female-fronted titles out-grossed male-led rivals on average. In fact, the more expensive the film, the greater the margin: Among films costing $50 million to $100 million, the international box office for women-led films averaged $318 million, compared with $243 million for men. For the top budget category of $100 million and up, women-led titles raked in $586 million compared with $514 million for men.
It wasn’t just the presence of women in lead roles that made a difference, either. It seems that even talking about men too much affected the bottom line of a film. Along with the box office of female-led films, the research looked at the commercial performance of films that pass the Bechdel Test. Films that passed the test—which gauges whether a film has multiple women who speak to each other, on screen, about topics other than men— outperformed films that flunked it, the study found. Since 2012, all films to pass $1 billion in global box office have passed the Bechdel Test.
“This is powerful proof that audiences want to see everyone represented on screen,” says Amy Pascal, one of the working group’s heads and the former chairman of Sony Pictures. “Decision-makers in Hollywood need to pay attention to this.” CAA’s Christy Haubegger adds, “Women comprise half the box office, yet there has been an assumption in the industry that female-led films led were generally less successful. We found that the data does not support that assumption.”
You can see the full study by CAA and Shift7 here, and bookmark it for the next Star Wars flame war.
301 Comments
This is cool to hear.
Have you ever met the A.V. Club comment section? We’re totally cool with this. Topple the patriarchy – it’s not like it’s doing a competent job running the place.
#NotAllCommentSections
What’s that saying about comment sections proving the need for feminism?Also, it is amazing how there are still always men who think they can get a pass on their misogyny by just labeling themselves not-misogynists.
No one cares you fat ignorant liar.
I hate you for this, in the most loving way.
Depends on the topic and whether the article’s crosslinked to places. And whether people dismiss racist/misogynist comments or bring them out of the gray. Or if it’s the South Park TV reviews.
South Park reviews are hardly a bastion of the alt-right, the most recent reviewer is just…controversial.
I wouldn’t outright call him shite, but you can clearly tell the lad isn’t always able to keep his composure and keep politically detached to the extent that a show like South Park can require. He’s not massively biased or anything, but some of his takes feel very…uhhh…schizophrenic.
Oh and we get a lot of extremely butthurt commenters who seemingly haven’t actually watched the show in years but will be the first to tell you week after week about how that one episode of South Park from fourteen years ago was totally single handedly responsible for Donald Trump.
I think the South Park reviews would be better if you didn’t show up every week to make your smug, pointless comments on a show you don’t even like, tbh.
I think the South Park reviews would be better if you didn’t show up every week to make your smug, pointless comments on a show you don’t even like, tbh.
No one cares what you think about anything fucking thumb boy.
I have noticed all the av club republicans seem to hang out in the comments for South Park reviews. They like to ruin things there.
But you see, the AV Club comments section is kinda like Stranger Things – it may seem normal on the surface, but if you make the mistake of entering a portal into the Upside Down (by clicking “Show Pending”) you’ll see there’s a lot of scary shit hiding in plain sight!
Someone might even disagree with you!
Yes, how dare there not be an echo chamber.
What a smug, preening comment you’ve made
Don’t get spooked by Squamate, folks. We keep them around to mock, and as a cautionary tale showing how regressive ideology turns you into an angry, relentlessly bitter troll. They’re mostly harmless. That’s one of the things they’re angry about.
I like that the troll got angry at you suggesting the comments section here wasn’t that horrible. HE DEMANDS RECOGNITION(Although alas I a bit disagree with your assessment of this place though, people might not be quite so immediately horrific but there’s still a lot of ick)
No one demands recognitions here, but he keeps showing up.
I will never not star Borscht-belt-style one-liners.
Thanks, I’ll be here all week.. Enjoy the buffet, and tip your waitresses!
Dude’s adorable.
*gets out spray bottle*No! Bad Squamate!
A quick look through the comments you’ve made shows that you’re quite the expert in smug comments. All you really do is comment negatively on other comments. You should get that compulsive negativity thing checked out. Caring for your mental health is cool now.
You certainly proved him wrong. Good job.
Agreed. The patriarchy crushes it.
I don’t know what happens between your comment section and mine but A.V. Club is just as devastatingly disappointing as any other.
Yeah, the AV Club is not the place you think it is.
It’s not like you to be such a bitter contrarian, recognitions. What gives?
Exhibit A
Sentence fragment.
yeah come on, we’re not misogynists! We’re just pathetic losers who watch embarrassing cartoons intended for children all day!!
Don’t even try. You’re screwed no matter what you say
Right? While I am not in your topple the patriarchy camp (sorry, still respect you buddy!), I take umbrage to the Univision-mandated clickbait title. Just entertain me, movies. Penis, vagina, undecided: it’s all good if it’s good.Hey Jill if it makes you feel better: Marah Eakin is 25x better at writing than Alex “Hate Humanity” McLevy. Allison Shoemaker is 30x than Dennis “Chicago Comic” Whatever the heck his name is. And Gwen Ihnat and Kate Bernot are orders of magnitude more insightful and entertaining than Hughes and Barsanti.#GirlPower!Kevin Pang though- that dude’s a-ok in my book
I mean, we have a small contingent of fuckstain commenters (Gnat King Cole, everybody!), and I do think the tone has dropped a little since Kinja, but this is still one of the more pleasant comment communities I’ve seen.
The golden days are gone. We do not speak of them anymore. It only brings pain. All we have left now is Kinja.
Ahhhh the Before-Before.
It’s not a community when everyone has a censorship gun to their head so they have to say what they think the site wants them to say. Community is what old AV Club had before it died.
Oh yeah I for one have never read any misogynistic comments on AV Club.Said no one ever (unless they’re a troll. They’ll say that).
They exist, yes, but the consensus is against them. Consensus doesn’t mean unanimity.
Is Theresa May doing a competent job as England’s Prime Minister?
Just don’t wander over to Kotaku or even i09. They have very “strong” opinions on casting choices.
While I really want to believe this, I’m not sure the effect isn’t because everyone is going “OMG WOMEN CHARACTERS/DEVELOPERS/ETC WE MUST SUPPORT THEM” and artificially inflating the movies. When it becomes mainstream to have major female characters and women directors and stuff, *then* we’ll see who does better.
It’s mainly pushing against the idea in Hollywood that female-led movies don’t sell because men can’t immerse themselves. Conventional wisdumb is that men and women will watch male characters but men won’t watch female characters. This report is just showing that that’s based on some big ol’ misogyny.
No it shows that you can manipulate statistics to say pretty much whatever you want them to. But I wouldn’t imagine that a human thumb like yourself would be able to understand that. Ugly ass motherfucker.
If only you could manipulate the 0/10 rating your general appearance has.
Exactly. Women have been expected to identify with male leads in movies for the past century or so – is it really that much of a burden to ask male audiences to identify with a woman for once?Heck, as a man, I often find myself identifying more with the female characters in movies anyway, because the dashing, handsome male character all too often just comes off as a colossal dickhead.
Conventional wisdumb is that men and women will watch male characters but men won’t watch female characters. And it’s such a weird idea, because as far as I can tell, men love watching women in most other contexts. You know, on the street, at work, in the privacy of their own homes via telescope etc…
I’ll never understand that attitude from my fellow XY Chromosome carriers. Who cares what gender someone is so long as the character is interesting, the story well told and you step blinking into the light afterwards having been entertained? Thinking back over the last thirty years or so I’m pretty sure my list of immediately memorable awesome characters in movies, TV, books, comics etc would be mainly composed of women.
Doesn’t this show that the problem of misogyny might not be as widespread as much of the internet would have you believe. And if we are being honest, most of the NERD world has always been accepting of more liberal and diverse perspectives since forever. Star Trek, Terminator, Alien, etc…
This isn’t to say that the nerd culture didn’t have its bad examples (like fan service-y crap and stuff)… but these once-niche markets were often way ahead of the curve despite usually being marketed to a mostly male audience.
Big ol’ overwokeness. The idea that people can’t properly identify with someone onscreen unless they are the same demographic is called “representaion”, it’s a big deal and has been used as part of the marketing for films as diverse as superhero Wonder Woman, superhero Captain Marvel and superhero Black Panther.
“I want to believe this reaearch, but instead I’m going to believe an unsubstantiated hunch i have that is completely unresearched.”Stay woke.
That’s gotta be close to the dumbest idea I have ever read
I’m cautiously optimistic. Usually when Hollywood tries to jump on a bandwagon they botch it, come across as blatantly pandering, and generally fail miserably. The fact that the results of this (admittedly flawed) study show greater revenue indicate it’s a genuine audience reaction and not the result of some short term marketing scheme.
“When it becomes mainstream to have major female characters and women directors and stuff….”
That’s *literally* the point of supporting them in the first place. We absolutely deserve to get to a point where there can be a mediocre film starring a woman, directed by a woman, and written by a woman. It should be bland as hell. It should be the sort of thing where you go “Oh. I think I saw that?” and the actors, writers, and directors should be able to make a movie again next year. Women-led films should *not* be big deals, but they have to be because, again, as you said, it’s not even mainstream for them to *exist* let alone fail.
I get your point, but besides someone saying, “I only watched it because it’s about a woman,” how do you even separate “artificial” motivation to watch a movie from genuine? It seems like such an unclear to nonexistent line. Who the movie is about and who’s starring in it are inherent influences on its appeal. Does wanting to watch a movie because it stars an actress you like count? What about being interested in a movie because you read a review praising its intelligent feminist themes?Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. The study purports to show that movies with women billed first make relatively more money than those with men billed first over the last few years. Money is money. Whatever the motivation, people are paying to see these movies, and that’s what studios care the most about.
Artificial because it is tied to a current socio-political movement. Your point about seeing a movie because of a certain actress actually reinforces that point. Actors are also a trend. While that actor is in vogue, everything they do is gold. But it is because of their position as current trend, so using their actions as proof of anything would be futile. The next trend will come, and different things are suddenly the ‘in’ thing. The next trend could even be entirely contradictory. So, any conclusions drawn today are based upon useless information. The data needs to be collected across many trends, or in this case, political climates. The conclusion might end up exactly the same, but right now, it is rather premature. (Unless of course you are a movie producer, then current trends are all that really matter, in which case you put a female lead in every movie you can until it stops being profitable.)
What is pure, genuine motivation to watch a movie then? I don’t think it exists, because it’s not possible to boil down why people want to watch a movie so discretely. Maybe, “the story looks interesting” would be the least superficial, but premises and genres fall into trends too, and what stands out depends on what came before it. Plus there are almost always other factors: who’s involved in it (director/actor/producer/screenwriter/production company/whoever, and why you like them can also depend on many other things—past work, an interesting interview they gave…), the trailer, the visuals, critical buzz, what you hear from your friends, etc., which can also be influenced by the times. There are many great movies that are inextricably tied to the era they were made in, and that fact doesn’t necessarily devalue it.I’m not taking these findings as gospel anyhow, I’m well aware they’re looking at a snapshot in time (and may come from questionable analysis). As natureslayer pointed out, it mostly serves as a rebuttal to the assumption that women-led films are unappealing to a wide audience so they always make less money. And even if people saying, “See this movie to support women!” (or minorities, or queer voices, etc) is having a big effect on the box office, that’s exactly the goal. Show interest through money, and what was regarded as “risky” (ie unprofitable) will no longer seem that way to studios.
EVERYTHING is a god damn social construct right down to our five senses.(seriously look it up). So NOTHING matters under your silly, silly definition.
That’s not really how the #Market works anyway. There are all types of products and services that people pay for simply because other people have done the same, regardless of actual quality. For example: “the Rock” movies. Ultimately, there are no “inflated” numbers when someone pays money for something. That they paid is all that matters. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if “support your local female actor/director” isn’t already a plank in some studios’ marketing strategies.
“When it becomes mainstream to have major female characters and women directors and stuff, *then* we’ll see who does better.:”That’s a bit of cart before the horse, now isn’t it?Part of the reason it’s not mainstream is because of archaic thinking about what sells, which (unsurprisingly) is based on past data where white men were the standard-bearers for lead roles.
I’d argue that there might be a sort of selection bias, but not in the way you think.Women-led movies have to be good enough to impress a bunch of stodgy men to ignore their usual inclinations and put the money forward to start filming. Whereas Adam Sandler can walk in with some random script he found in the public restroom that someone had used for toilet paper and walk away with $100 mil.
Apology accepted. Now, is someone going to apologize for the baffling lack of NoMeansNo coverage? Sure, they retired 2 years ago, but….come on!
If there is one thing that is guaranteed to be HUGE with the face-tattoo rap crew, it’s middle-aged canadians playing a funky, jazzy, proggy punk rock.
I believe they passed middle aged when “All Roads Lead To Ausfahrt” was released…I think Rob is 64
It’s almost like women can be competent filmmakers and make up, you know, roughly half the population.
More than half, statistically.
BUT BUT BUT THE NEW GHOSTBUSTERS REBOOT WASNT ANY GOOD
Facts have never, ever swayed the minds of misogynists and racists.
No but they annoy the fuck out of them, so that’s something
You are a dumb asshole whose opinion is never going to matter to anyone. That you get off on being as annoying as possible is a great summation of your actual character.
holy shit you are adorable
And you’re a failure at life.
Still here projecting your myriad of life failures? Tsk, tsk.
Well lets be clear, you aren’t a doctor, you’re just some loser who desperately needs something to be true so you’ve decided that it is.
Oh, yeah because you need to be a meteorologist to see that it’s raining outside. Go through each and every post of yours and you’ll find a sad, desperate attempt to call other people losers, nobodies. It’s extremely telling. Almost beginning to think it’s satire.
Don’t you remember that nobody anywhere cares what you think?
Also, you ever take a look at your own post history douchebag? Literally everything you’ve written could pretty equally be attributed to you. The only difference is that you write and reason like a child and seem desperate to try to convince me that I don’t have the job I get up and go to every day.
It’s funny that someone so clearly desperate for even negative attention so consistently tries to pretend that anyone anywhere would try and go out of their way to interact with you. You’re a loser. Which is why you hang out here desperately trying to forge some kind of human connection.
It’s so funny how you react to things the way children do. It’s almost like you have the maturity and mental process of a child.
I love you too, Muellerbueller. We’re going to be so happy together.
It must be so exciting that you’ve goaded someone into interacting with you intentionally. I’m sure acting like a douchebag makes you forget for a few seconds what an utter failure you are at life. I feel sorry for your mother.
Oh we’re going to do a lot more than interact.
If I was you and this was what I found funny and spent my time with I would have killed myself years ago.
You’re like this loser in my 5th grade class whose dad had just committed suicide the summer before. He clearly needed attention and didn’t care what kind he got so he spent the better part of 3 months singing this annoying commercial jingle from a Nintendo 64 commercial that had been airing that fall and winter in response to anything anyone said to him. And when people asked him to stop he’d get this tormented look in his eyes and keep doing it, sometimes in a more annoying shrill voice. You aren’t funny, no one likes you and you clearly do this for attention. Because you’re a fucking child.
“You aren’t funny, no one likes you and you clearly do this for attention. Because you’re a fucking child.”Pot, meet your retarded brother, Kettle.
I’m not trying to be funny so that doesn’t really apply and your opinion doesn’t matter regardless. Oh no, a complete loser who can barely put a sentence together and who i’m mocking online thinks i’m “not funny”. What will I do???
Oh hey, it’s the baby who gets driven to brag about imaginary jobs to complete strangers on the internet.
And actually, just for fun, i’ll let you in on a little sneak peak of what I’m doing right now. Every single lobbying firm I applied to got back to me, 2 of them with solid job offers up front and the rest with interview requests. Do you know how good that feels? I mean, granted, it probably has more to do with the fact that my boss is now the chair of an approps committee that has control of somewhere in the ballpark of $34 billion dollars of disbursements but STILL. What do you do? I would love to get in a dick measuring match, especially when i’m feeling such a genuine physical high at the moment. Actually wait let me guess. I bet you work in insurance or something. Secretary? Nothing to be ashamed of, after all the world needs ditch diggers.
tl;dr
I knew I’d get you to write a few more paragraphs for me about some job you have for the 80th time. Dance, puppet, dance!
You are mentally ill.
Dance, puppet, dance!
Mmmm, more mental gymnastics please. I guess if I was as big a loser as you I’d have to come up with a mental process that framed myself as somehow controlling the other person. Or not who knows. I love your use of buzzwords though, as now i’m apparently an incel. God you are just soooo smart. I mean you have the vocabulary of a child and you don’t appear to understand much outside of the sad little bubble you live in but wowwwww. Such a genius who should definitely not kill herself any time soon.
I love the part where you made multiple Kinja accounts and forgot to log out of them while talking shit. Psychopath.
Mmm, yeah thats what happened. It’s not at all that I have one account on my work computer and one on my phone. I’m not even sure how that would make me a “psychopath”. I wasn’t impersonating someone else, I used literally the same username. Christ you’re stupid.
Muellerbueller65, Muellerbueller78, mostlyharmless1989, where’s the others, you sad, sad little man? On your grave will be the phrase “owned 3+ Kinja accounts”
Ohhh…look at the lil’ baby who can’t quit. Sad. Tschüss
Seriously though, what does your mother think of the fact that her kid is a complete fucking failure at life? Unless of course you really are like 15 in which case all of this would make sense and I would hold you blameless. But I doubt that’s the case.
Ok so my plane leaves BWI in like 3 hours and I make it a point not to look at my phone or the news when i’m on vacation so lets just run down the salient points one more time:You aren’t intelligent You aren’t funnyYou’ve done nothing with your lifeYour parents are almost certainly ashamed of you even if they don’t express it to your face You are never going to be of note to anyoneAnd last but not least: No one, especially any man, is ever going to find you attractive or love you. You are going to be alone the rest of your life and die in a sad crappy apartment with a few people attending your funeral out of guilt or because they know a sibling of yours or something. You’ll have to leave any questions for 6 days from now because i’m going to get drunnnnk as shit at the Wynn for a few days and play craps like there’s no tomorrow. But hey, seriously, have a good holiday season. You deserve it.
Dance, puppet, dance! The king requires more psychos to pour their heart out into Kinja over and over again.
Yeah you’ve said that several times. It’s not funny. To anyone. You’re just not an intelligent or funny person. Sorry.
I love how you bend to my every whim. You reply on command. It’s beautiful. Sit, Spot. Good boy.
Ready for another day as a secretary or whatever depressing shit you call a job?
Awww, a personal wakeup call from Kinja’s resident incel janitor. How sweet!
Awww, a personal wakeup call from Kinja’s resident incel janitor. How sweet!
So you’re saying you want to play Nintendo with me? Aw! It’s a date!
The smartest funniest people always repeat the same jokes over and over and over again. It’s a real mark of wit and intelligence.
It us:
Soooooo smart and funny. You should take this act on stage. All the smartest funniest people post gifs constantly and it is NOT something primarily done by teenagers and people unable to express themselves with words. At all.
Yeah I probably wouldn’t respond either if someone hit as close to home as that on me. I mean lets be real, this is all you’ve got. Anyway, i’m off to vegas for the next 6 days and try not to check my phone or the news when i’m on vacation. I honestly think you should kill yourself because it bothers me that I have to share a world with people like you, but if you don’t take my advice maybe i’ll see more dumb bullshit you post in a pathetic attempt to connect to other humans when I get back. Or not, who cares. Because you don’t matter.
Oh I’m sure you’ll just use one of your 18 Kinja accounts from your mom’s basement after you throw up the white flag for 6 days.
we’re all lincoln park in the end, my love
And apparently, there aren’t as many misogynists and racists as we thought! Thanks to this study, we now know that.
Nerdy men are threatened by men in lead roles, can’t go wrong with eliminating them
Somebody has to fix my computer.
If the internet is any measure, they’re threatened by everything.
Eh, in my experience they mostly idolise people who represent their masculine ideas. All the reddit / redpill-y types seem to talk a lot more about wanting to see / loving “alpha male” characters and actors.I guess there’s a few shy nerdy types who feel more comfortable without those sort of roles on screen but it’s mostly the aspirational nerdy types that care about what they’re seeing and they tend to worship at the feet of alpha
If you eliminate the “male” part of that descriptor, I bet you will find that many of the female characters in the female led films still fall under that “alpha” personality type.
True that, but you need more empathy and to not have an unhealthy sense oft he other to be able to look up to a cool member of the opposite sex.. I’m not sure those types have the required cognitive abilities to do that…
I actually remember an interesting discussion in the old AVC comment section a few years back hypothesizing that that’s why “pretty boy” actors (i.e. Zac Efron, Timothee Chalamet, etc.) have trouble getting taken seriously, because a lot of nerdy young guys are threatened by them being better looking.
The leads have finally made it.The writers, however, still a long way to go.
This study is strange and confusing. For example, their definition of “woman lead” sucks. Apparently it’s based on who negotiates for higher potion in the credits and in the trailers. The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens count as being led by Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford respectively, despite that clearly not being the case. And there’s no list of which movies count as what. In their methods when they talk about it, they just link to a splash page for an industry website where you can buy access to some tools.There’s also no breakdown of how many movies fit into which category of budget. For example, I’d be interested to know how many $100m+ budget movies were made with male vs female leads.Edit: it’s funny that the header picture is of a movie that the study explicitly says counts as male led. And if they had a better definition, and it did count properly, the numbers would probably be even more stark in favor of woman leads.
And every story about this in the Gawker blogs has used a picture of Daisy Ridley in The Last Jedi!
It makes sense. It really should count, and was one of the ones people were most toxic about.It’s just funny to me because the study is so opaque, except to point out those two movies as not counting.
Regardless of whether it should or should not count, it didn’t. So to write a story about a study which didn’t consider The Last Jedi as a female-led film and put a picture of it front and center is a tad bit disingenuous.Just to be clear – I like The Last Jedi and Daisy Ridley.
I mean they were pretty clearly trolling and I support them
“I mean they were pretty clearly trolling and I support them” – given the persistent laziness and sloppiness with which these Woke Hot Takes are churned out, it’s far from clear they were trolling, rather than seeing a headline they liked on a gut level and extemporizing from there.
Yeah it’s pretty cool
Yeah because you’re a piece of shit.
No one cares what you do or don’t support dipshit.
I’m ok with having more pictures of Daisy Ridley in the world, even if it has nothing to do with the article.
I assume that’s because none of the authors bothered to read the actual study or methodology before rushing to crow about their favored interpretation of the bottom-line result.
I think it actually makes it even more striking. TFA and TLJ are considered male-led, and the female-led films STILL lead.
Unless there are a bunch of male-led movies misfiled as female-led. I’m not saying this is the case, just pointing out that it demonstrates that their method for sorting seems fundamentally flawed.
“The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens count as being led by Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford respectively, despite that clearly not being the case.”
I think the wringing of hands of Star Wars is kind of pointless because those movies are quite clearly ensembles. There isn’t one clear lead character in them. Rey is more front and centre in TLJ but in TFA there are clearly three leads (Rey, Finn, Poe) and two of them are men, so I don’t see how anyone would count it as a female-led movie.
Can we really chalk up the success of the new Star Wars films to them being female led? Or is it more a case of an incredibly uber successful film franchise that just keeps being successful. If we remove reboots/re-imaginings/expansions in existing franchises/universes, then are female led films still wildly successful?
What do they consider woman led films? I think this seems pretty obvious that most of these budget levels the most successful films that I can think of off the top of my head are woman led, but I’m not sure about the mega budget. You have The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, Rogue One, Wonder Woman, Hunger Games and Malificent? Does Black Panther count since every other character that matters is a woman? That may be enough right there, but I’m just wondering what counts and what doesn’t.
Apparently TLJ and TFA don’t count as female-led.
“Studio System defines a “female lead” as a woman who is listed first in official press materials. Where Studio System has not received official press materials and there is no opening credit sequence where the leads are listed, Studio System relies on trailers or one-sheets to help determine the proper cast order. “
“Many films feature co-leads or ensemble casts. However, for consistency, and because this designation is generally reflected in the marketing of the film, this analysis uses the first actor listed by Studio System as the lead actor. Some films were billed with a male lead though audiences may perceive the film as being female led. For example, Studio System lists Harrison Ford as the lead in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Mark Hamill as the lead in Star Wars: The Last Jedi though audiences may think of Daisy Ridley as the lead in both.”
Okay, that’s a super bizarre and confusing way of qualifying what is a female lead and sort of dishonest, in some cases. I don’t care who’s getting top billing in the new Star Wars films, they are definitely led by women and Captain America doesn’t count as women led because Scarlet Johansson is second billed. If you leave it as common sense, the grosses are probably more in favor of women.
I suspect this is the reason they didn’t publish more of the data with their conclusions. I imagine if you were to look at their lists of female and male led movies you’d find a lot more to argue with than just the ones we already know about. TLJ and TFA are definitely female-led, and both were also very successful.
I hope someone is ambitious enough to do the research that would prove the thesis statement still holds true without the flimsy qualifications, because I wold bet it still does. Not counting the new Star Wars films is just insane.
Unfortunately, whoever decided to do that would also be forced to come up with a clearly defined way of separating male led from female led movies other than “that’s obviously a female-led movie.”
Like, how do you prove that TFA is a female-led movie? The total amount of time you see a female character on screen?
It’s an interesting thing to think about. 🙂
Also, what do you do with movies where the male and female leads basically share top billing? You’d need an additional category (like this study should have had) for movies where there is no clear gender lead.
I’d define it by which character has the most screen time.
They counted the new Star Wars, they just counted them on the men’s side. Categorizing them correctly would make the numbers lean more towards the women, but it wouldn’t change the overall results.
That’s what’s so weird about it. You have the same results either way and even better results if you do it in a way that makes more sense.
The question becomes how many other movie are categorized as female-led that are probably male-led? It may be telling that the two most prominent examples they offered were clearly misfiled in a direction that would seem to support their findings.
Anyway, I’m all for more parity in the Hollywood creative process. I’m just wary of taking people at face value.
There is a distinct and powerful smell of bullshit coming off this study…
Eh, I think it’s actually more honest to exclude them. “Star Wars” is a gargantuan franchise—the prequels made a ton of money despite being, at best, polarizing, and from a narrative standpoint, not even having leads. People came in force to see beloved characters return, not a complete unknown. Like, applying it to other movies means that say “Training Day” was a success because of Ethan Hawke, not Denzel Washington, or that “Wanted” was all about James MacAvoy, not Anegelina Jolie.
I’m all for giving women credit when their movies are a success, but this isn’t “Twilight” or “Hunger Games” where women built it from the ground up, but sheer nostalgia and inertia.
If you actually really looked into it then it would be a lot worse for female led movies.
“Fit the narrative”This defines 2016-present day.
Well, that’s a bullshit definition. Fury Road is absolutely a woman lead movie despite Tom Hardy’s top billing. Max is a side character, and it’s totally Furiosa’s story.
Apparently The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi actually don’t count. It’s based on who gets top billing, and that goes to Ford and Hamill. You also missed Frozen, Zootopia, and Beauty and the Beast. I’m not sure if the Alice in Wonderland movies counted or if Depp got those. And I don’t know about the 50 Shades movies. Possibly more, but those are the only ones I can think of.
I forgot about cartoons, but I also have no idea what the budgets look like on those so they doubly didn’t cross my mind and I assumed the 50 Shades movies weren’t in that top budget range. Seeing that the Star Wars films somehow don’t count just makes my head hurt.
I’m not actually sure the 50 Shades movies were in that range, but the high end cartoons can get up there. I was mostly just thinking about big effects movies.
Big effects movies was all I was really thinking about, too. The other ranges seems pretty easily woman dominated. Horror films are almost always women led, dramas skew heavily in that directions as do indie movies and most of the top comedies for the last several years have starred women as well.
Plus, while I like TLJ and TFA, if they passed the Bechdel Test it was by technicality.
Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina.
Not in 2018
Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina.You may want to reconsider that… Doesn’t seem to hold true these days.
Excellent Question. Thank you! I am looking forward to thinking about this and offering a response.
Yeah. The whole point of this smarmy fucking article was that apparently “everyone who questions the classifications/statistics” is a fucking misogynistic pig.HEY, AV, HEY, io9!!! WOMEN ARE GREAT, WOMEN WITH GOOD ROLES AND GOOD LEADING ROLES IN GOOD MOVIES ARE GREAT!!!Your articles are bad. The statistics are bad. The study is bad, and makes promoting feminism look foolish.Women are awesome.
wtf is wrong with you? so fuck unity its all about women. you make me fucking sick.
Where’s the data? There’s only 350 films, it’s not hard to output all the data underlying the numbers, especially when you admit it leads to results like Star Wars TFA and TLJ being considered male lead which is a questionable conclusion at best. Assuming this is legit and not how to lie with statistics I think it shows how risk averse the studio is with female lead films that they only greenlight the surefire hits (Hunger Games for example) and there’s a massive number of male lead films that get greenlit and just do jack-shit and destroy their average (Robin Hood for example)
350 films is probably enough to capture the highest grossing films/major studio films.
Their idea of “female-led” is a little random, and counting passing the bechtel test as a sign of feminist victory is like setting the bar on the ground and then proclaiming yourself a championship hurdler when you manage to leap over it, but baby steps I guess.Also, who would have thought that having movies that appealed to a broader demographic might make more money?
Yeah, there’s a lot of hinky stuff here. Correlation is not causation, folks!We do need more women in film, but poorly drawn statistical analyses shouldn’t be the motivation for it.
The only reason I doubt the accuracy of this study is a simple one: There is abso-fraking-lutely no way Hollywood would ever choose to make LESS money. If women led films truly made that much more money, there wouldn’t be any men in starring roles. (Yes, in my world cold hard cash wins out over racism/sexism every freaking day.)
Uh, you seem to have forgotten who runs most of Hollywood. Women are definitely making inroads at all levels, but (white) dudes still outnumber them by far in studio leadership and investment backer roles.
“There is abso-fraking-lutely no way Hollywood would ever choose to make LESS money.”The problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Hollywood actually knows what consistently makes money.And I think there’s plenty of evidence for the idea that Hollywood uses past success as a proxy for predicting what will make money. That’s why we are seeing tons of sequels and remakes and reboots, etc. And when that is your base predictive model, you’re going to end up with films in the future that look a lot like films in the past–which is to say, with on-screen representation of white people and men at a pace that exceeds their actual presence in society.
What people think is happening:“Gosh, we’ve been so misogynistic and close-minded when it comes to women leading films. In order to help empower women everywhere, we should make more female-led films.”What is actually happening:“Holy shit: bitches have cash, too!”
“Correlation is not causation, folks”Thank you!
Well, only when they get reported on as some sort of Final Verdict, as it is here. This is good to look at as part of the puzzle, but obviously it’s not comprehensive.
ya smacks of spurious correlation and confirmation bias. that said I’ll all for women leads. end of day though I just want to be entertained and the demographics of the film are a minor consideration
The Data doesn’t matter. The point of the article isn’t to illustrate literal difference, but just to highlight the fact that it doesn’t really matter. Cause it doesn’t.“Where’s the data?” Come on. Why?
“especially when you admit it leads to results like Star Wars TFA and TLJ being considered male lead which is a questionable conclusion at best.”
At best? TFA has three leads, two of them are male. In the context of the study the movie is at worst male led and at best an ensemble.
If they go by the top grossing films each year, I can see that helping the data’s “fairness” by controlling the sample for films that have comparable promotional budgets and release windows.If you add art-house movies, indies, streaming films released to qualify for awards, etc., then you introduce a whole lot more variance to your analysis.
Assuming this is legit and not how to lie with statistics I think it shows how risk averse the studio is with female lead films that they only greenlight the surefire hits (Hunger Games for example) and there’s a massive number of male lead films that get greenlit and just do jack-shit and destroy their average (Robin Hood for example)Yeah, one thing that comes to mind is that, the lower-budget and lower-risk a project, the more likely it will have a female lead. So when you get to the highest budget category, there are far fewer female-led films than male-films by proportion (this is reflected in the data they present on the study’s site), and those that make it through are probably the least risk-prone. So if the data shows anything, it’s not that female-led films innately make more money, just that a combination of fewer scripts and less willingness to take risks better ensures their success on average. And also, if you add up the total box office takes for those 350 movies, and split the amount down gender lines, the male-led movies make the industry a hell of a lot more money than the female-led ones. They just don’t make more on average.The takeaway should probably be that the industry could stand to take a few more risks on female-led films, rather than just going with what standing industry wisdom tells them is certain to work.
The scene in “female led movie” Avengers: Infinity War where Black Widow and Proxima Midnight discuss beating each other up really made that movie for me.
Nuh-uh, not if enough commentators comment otherwise! Com on, fellow commentators! We’ll comment reality to our liking! Commence commenting… com!
Very cool! It makes perfect sense that giving half of your target demo some on-screen representation can only help box office performance.That said, how the study defined ‘female-led’ vs. how virtually every moviegoer would define the term seem very different, and a lack of further detail in the study only makes things more confusing. For example, neither of the recent Star Wars movies were ‘led’ by Daisy Ridley because she wasn’t listed first in press materials or scripts. I’m pretty sure that the lay person perceives the lead as the character with the most dialogue/screen time. Since the article doesn’t actually list what ultimately did or didn’t make the female-led cut I’m left to wonder if their definition has any relationship at all with my (and what I assume to be everyone elses’) definition.
TLJ is still terrible.
RELEASE THE SYNDER CUT!
IT DEFIED EXPECTATIONS
Wonder Woman was dope; hope part two follows suit. I actually related to Black Swan. Alien was the shiznit. Anything starring Charlize Theron. Silence of the Lambs is a classic. Arrival was short changed at the Oscars. Sicario was underrated. High Tension still has me thinking. Angelina Jolie and Mila Jojovich are my go-to action stars (Where is the all female Expendibles movie!?) I think Melissa McCarthy and other female comedians are being held back with lame ass scripts. I just realized the big name actresses I could recall aren’t women of color-but- that’s a different article…
See Widows. It is a fucking RIDE and it has badass women of color and an adorable dog.
“This is powerful proof that audiences want to see everyone represented on screen,” As long as they are young and attractive.
Since 2012, all films to pass $1 billion in global box office have passed the Bechdel Test.Um, no. Transformers: Age of Extinction came out in 2014. Cumulative Worldwide Gross: It does not pass the test.
Actually, surprisingly, the Bechdel Test site rates it a pass. Apparently there’s a scene with two named female characters talking about a bomb in their car.
And are we completely sure that NEITHER of those aforementioned women ever express a desire, verbally or nonverbally, to fuck the bomb in their car?Until there is further study (by someone braver than me, I cravenly refuse to watch the film) I will doubt it rates a passing grade.
That’s a three-way conversation with a man:Joshua Joyce: Threatening a professional CIA killer. Possibly not my finest hour. I’d like to have that one back.Darcy Tirrel: Killer? I thought they were your friends!Joshua Joyce: No. Not friends. Business. They gave me this bomb.Su Yueming: Bomb? Is there a bomb in the bag?Darcy Tirrel: Yes, there’s a bomb in the bag.
People keep saying ‘well, this is a bit weird, they didn’t even count the recent non-spinoff Star Wars films’ are accidentally making the point even more damning. You take two of the biggest female-led films and put them in the ‘male-led’ category, and the ladies STILL overcome that handicap. That’s just impressive.
This is click-bait.
Unfortunately, we can’t look at the data in detail as most of it is proprietary, including most importantly, which films are designated as female led.
When movies like Force Awakens have Harrison Ford credited as the lead actor (So, not female led according to this analysis) something seems a little off. Then, look at the tiny number of female led films compared to male (of the 100 M+ production films, 19 are listed as female led 75 are listed as male led.)
Within those narrow confines, I’d be really surprised if you didn’t see some surprising and potentially explanatory commonalities amongst the lady led films For example, more of the female led movies are intentionally done as large hits, like Beauty and the Beast and have fewer generic/failure movies to dilute the pool. Of the 11 films that made over a billion, 4 of them (according to IMDB) seem to be female led, Beauty and the Beast, Zootopia, Rogue One and Finding Dory. I think all cost over 100 Million. And if more than a quarter of the qualifying films grossed over a billion, you’d have to have a lot of stinkers to drop the average far. (Of the male led films, less than 10% would have been in the billion dollar earner category.)
All this to say, be wary of concealed data sources and small sample sizes.
Agreed. Drawing conclusions about comparisons between two groups of very different sample sizes is generally ill-advised.
It’s that whole “correlation =/= causation” thing.A concept more people need to be aware of.
If anything, this shows that maybe people aren’t as motivated by the sex of the characters on screen as the internet fears. If men really did hate seeing women as leads, this clearly wouldn’t be happening. They are almost half the potential audience, afterall.
It’s almost as if, and stay with me here, women haven’t had much representation in this way on film before and it turns out there was a huge untapped market just waiting there. Crazy, I know. Personally I’m all for it. Wonder Woman and the new Star Wars films are great. So more female led movies I say.
While I don’t love the new SW films, the women in them are easily one of the highlights (especially Daisy Ridley). WW in particular was a battle cry that we don’t just need huge stone-chinned dudes glowering through every single movie (to not only be a good movie, but more importantly to Hollywood, to make $$$).Not only that, but female-led movies really open up flexibility for the entire cast. If your lead is male, you inevitably have to have a female love interest of some sort (which essentially becomes her entire character). Giving women more of a role in the movie ensures both genders will get better portrayals.
Ummmmm… are we really going to call this list progress?
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/82iu2z/which_movies_have_the_largest_disparity_when/?utm_source=reddit-android
Also, I hate to tell yah’, but the Bechdel Test is arbitrary garbage. How about we just let film makers make whatever movies they want, and tell whatever stories they want to tell. Instead of trying to impose arbitrary nonsense rules onto them. Deal?
looking at the list of 11 films that grossed a Billion from 14-17: 8 were under the Disney umbrella, Disney has 3 Films this year that grossed 1 Billion, I assume they all passed the Bechdel Test as well, and then you look what they have instore for 2019:Captain MarvelDumboAvengers: EndgameAladdinLion KingFrozen 2Star Wars 93 are Female lead films for sure, and have to think all are passing the Bechdel Test as well, Not bad for the Mouse
As far as I remember, there was only the one female character in Aladdin. So if it’s sticking really close to the original, it won’t pass the Bechdel Test.
In the 93 cartoon that is true, looking at the cast list of the new one though, Nasim Pedrad is listed as “Dalia, Jasmine’s loyal handmaiden and confidante”. I am guessing she may be comedic relief perhaps, but Disney admit this is a newly created role. Disney for the last several years has been really pushing for more diversity in films like these tent pole features, here it’s a mostly Middle-Eastern cast, so it makes sense they also don’t want the image of Jasmine being the only female character of note on film
Thinking about it, I don’t think the Lion King passed either. There’s a scene with a non named (until the credits) female character talking about Simba with his mother, but that’s as close as it gets. And that’s just really just a throwaway line.
And checking on the new Lion King, Amy Sedaris is listed a an Elephant shrew in a newly created role, Disney is certainly through with filling their films with more women then they had the first time around
There’s certainly room for them to get there. And I haven’t seen their other remakes, so I don’t know how far they deviate. Do they follow the old scripts pretty closely? Did the new Beauty and the Beast pass? And I don’t think Jungle Book did.
I haven’t gotten around to seeing the newer Disney films, but a good number of the old ones vary, this article is from mid 17 so it highlights where many dohttps://www.hercampus.com/school/ucsb/so-how-many-disney-movies-pass-bechdel-test
The new Beauty and the Beast does pass, but Jungle Book doesn’t, The new Dumbo looks very different from the original story with more humans involved, they are willing to update stories where necessary
Looking at it, a lot of them depend on what counts as “named” and what counts as “conversations”. I tend to think titles count as names, but credit listing onlys don’t. And I guess technically a lot of them pass on banter, one liners, or throwaway lines which are iffy.
Yeah but they’re probably just gonna talk about men, right? Jasmine’s dad, Jasmine’s suitors, plus Jasmine will have one line, technically directed to Dalia but really while gazing out at Agrabah, about wanting something more from life. Maybe they’ll make the tiger female so they can talk about that?
“In the 93 cartoon that is true, looking at the cast list of the new one though, Nasim Pedrad is listed as “Dalia, Jasmine’s loyal handmaiden and confidante”. I am guessing she may be comedic relief perhaps, but Disney admit this is a newly created role.”I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that the chance that Jasmine and her handmaiden aren’t going to do much talking about topics that aren’t Aladdin…
That is likely true, but i still get the feeling they will do the bare minimum just to not get called out for not passing the Bechdel test, even if it is just one line about the politics of Agrabah or whatever topic they will shoe horn in
Infinity War just barely passed because of a minute-long banter between the female Avengers and Thanos’ female lackey during the big battle. Gamora was by far the most important woman in the movie, but Thanos, Iron Man, and Thor were arguably more important and Strange was about on her level as well.
Gamora also had a conversation with Nebula about the infinity stone. And one with her mother about the invasion.
I’m not confident that Star Wars 9 will pass the Bechdel Test, since it hasn’t (significantly) in any previous episode. And now without Leia? They’ll shoehorn in a three-line scene where Rey talks to Maz, and Rey and Rose will probably run down a corridor together or something, but Star Wars doesn’t seem interested in its female characters actually having relationships with each other.
3 are Female lead films for sureCapt Marvel and Frozen 2… What’s your third? Keeping in mind that SW7 & 8 were considered NOT female lead in this study….
COMPLETELY off topic, but what’s the deal with women wearing dress jackets and apparently no shirt under them? Am I the only one who thinks that’s a little weird (or at least a little chilly)?
It’s for when you want to feel like a feminist but also your career depends upon being sexually attractive.
Which is no insult to women who dress like that. Being a woman’s just fucking tough.
Indeed, much more important to have a career.
We all want this to be true. I’m sure CAA and “shift7″ (whatever that is) also want this to be true. But Hollywood’s not really known for its cutting-edge research papers. And let’s not treat the Bechdel Test like something discovered by Issac Newton. (Or Marie Curie for that matter.)
Don’t tell me! I already know. Psychological studies proving that women like other women far more than men like other men have been available since long before any of us were born. Go tell Amazon. Maybe they’ll bring back Good Girls Revolt and One Mississippi.Yeah. No. I’m not willing to let either of those go yet, and you can look forward to me harping about Good Girls Revolt for the next decade, just like I did Deadwood and Carnivale. ><
Psychological studies proving that women like other women far more than men like other men have been available since long before any of us were born.
I am embarrassed, as a feminist with a psych degree, to say I did not know that. Thanks! I am enjoying my Google dive.
This attempt at reversing sexism is not really honest. I’m all
for more female led films, but let’s not bend the facts.
“Analyzing 350 films released between January 2014 and December 2017″
Why this time frame? Why not previous years? Because the averages worked out
better during this time. Why not 2018?
let’s run 2018 based on their standard of first billed actor sex based on IMDB
pro (should be same info as studio system)
1 Black Panther – M2 Avengers: Infinity War – M3 Incredibles 2 – M (surprised me a little)4 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – M5 Deadpool 2 – M6 Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch (2018) – M7 Mission: Impossible – Fallout – M8 Ant-Man and the Wasp – M9 Solo: A Star Wars Story – M10
Venom – M
I suspect we’ll have a couple by the end of the year with Mary Poppins,
Bumblebee, but for now you have to go to #11 (A star is born)
Maybe we should just preach equality instead of trying to make cherrypicked
arguments about what’s better.
(Heck, the article even explains why “The Last Jedi” is a male led film according to the study, even though that would help the female average if done the other way, so the writer kind of missed that.)
Wouldn’t a lot of this be reflective more of franchises and films with popular names? Like, obviously if you make a female-led Star Wars (and yes I know TFA and TLJ weren’t actually included here for dubious reasons) it’s going to make a shitload of money – it’s Star Wars, it will do that no matter who you cast probably. I wouldn’t be surprised if the breakdown is more like “franchise movies make money, and studios making big franchises intentionally make them as broadly appealing as possible.”Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t be surprised if the central idea is true, but that’s difficult to judge based on this. Franchise blockbusters have been growing more diverse and well, that’s what really makes money regardless of the particulars.
“Like, obviously if you make a female-led Star Wars (and yes I know TFA and TLJ weren’t actually included here for dubious reasons)“
Actually, they weren’t in there for credible reasons.
I don’t understand how it’s so difficult for everyone to remember that this trilogy has three leads and two of them are men.
But the reason they were listed as male led is Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill, not John Boyega and Oscar Isaac. Han and Luke were certainly not the leads in either of those movies, unless the leads of Star Wars and Empire were Alec Guinness and Frank Oz.
Rey is unquestionably the main character in the new trilogy. I know what the reasons were that they didn’t count them in the survey, but it was actually that Ford and Hamill (and Fisher) were top billed for contractual reasons. And Finn and Poe, while prominent enough, are essentially supporting characters. Again, Rey is really the primary character, and would count in this study if not for that arbitrary distinction.
Tell more easily dubunkable lies and then be insanely condescending about them even when they’ve been proven conclusively to be lies. Really good look. Definitely an activity that lots of intelligent people participate in. You are all very dumb, very bad ideologues.
2 out of 21 aint bad women.. keep it up.
Good, maybe this will shut up some feminists saying that everything in life isn’t fair for women.
There have been great strides made in changing the landscape of the film industry in terms of the representation women and minorities have. That’s awesome and should by all means continue to trend upwards.But this is a misleading study purposefully designed to prove a point. It harkens to the Times Ghostbusters review, “Women are funny, GET OVER IT.” Yeah no kidding NYT thank you. The point is there are many other factors that could have led these films to do well. That’s why they bury the film titles in the bottom of the study. They’re made up of huge comic book blockbusters and a Finding Nemo sequel. And before the mysogeny mob comes smashing that mf’in reply button, this is not a gender issue. It’s an honesty issue. We should not so willingly accept media outlets to politically ramrod us with misleading facts, no matter the issue.I’m looking at you, Jill Hopkins.
I’ve read enough peer reviewed scientific studies to know that, until a statistician tells you that a study is actually worth a damn, chances are it’s not worth a damn.
“Analyzing 350 films released between January 2014 and December 2017″ “This is powerful proof that audiences want to see everyone represented on screen”Sure, honey. Keep that study confined to a minute period of three years in the entire history of film, wherein many Hollywood producers have been disproportionately hyper focused on putting women at the head of revamps of old major blockbuster franchises to push their political agendas, all of which rely purely on the good will of fans of the originals to make ridiculous amounts of money relative to competing films, which more often than not turn out to be critical catastrophes that don’t live up to fan expectations, consequentially lose money for entries in the franchise to follow it *cough* and amount to nothing more than a bait-and-switch for passionate audiences.Talk to me when that “study” is expanded by another 10 years or so, or altered in any way that makes it something other than the most laughable and biased claim on “research” I’ve seen in a long, long time.
If money is all you want, money is all you’ll get.
Well, you also get the goods and services for which money can be exchanged.
Wow… scanning through the comments section shows a clique of pretentious, toxic douche-nozzles. I think I’ll steer clear.
Most feature-length 70s pornographic films pass the Bechdel Test. Make of that what you will.
AND WHEN WILL THEY START MAKING BETTER MOVIES?
>women-led films are making more moneyand
>less than 30% of the films are women-led
theory one: if Hollywood increases the proportion of women-led movies then it will make more money because such films are more profitable
theory two: a bias against women-led movies makes it harder for them to get green-lit, which in turn means that the few that are made are likely to be of higher quality than the standard is fare
thoughts?
I suspect that both theories can be true. There is probably some additional market for women-led movies, but I agree that women-led films are also on average likely to be of higher quality due to studio concerns about the viability of women-led films. It’s kind of a variation on the “Daniel Day-Lewis Never Made A Bad Movie Problem” — is that because Daniel Day-Lewis is such a great actor that he elevates every film he’s in so that you could make more good films by just casting Daniel Day-Lewis in them or is that because Daniel Day-Lewis makes very few films, and is extremely choosy about the films that he does appear in, thus making sure he only appears in good films?
It occurred to me that two other factors could be involved and ought to be considered:
A) if there are two types of thing for which there’s a demand and one is produced in smaller numbers, then the examples of it face greater demand
Here an analogy could be made between movies and restroom facilities. Men’s rooms often have more ‘sanitary plumbing fixtures’ than the women’s rooms, even though the rooms are equal in size. As a result, the individual women’s fixtures will get more use if an equal number of men and women use the restrooms.
If there’s demand for entertainment with a particular gender featured and there are half as many female-led movies, then the female-led films ought to sell more tickets. People wanting to see a particular type of film and preferring it to be male-led have more options than they have hours &/or dollars to devote to movies. If you’re interested in a certain genre and your preference is that be women-led, then that’s not necessarily the case. A huge science fiction fan with a strong preference for female leads could see them all.
It’s possible then that reducing the number of male-led films would make them more profitable but increasing the number of female-led may make them less profitable. There’s no longer reason not to think that when we look at profit that it isn’t a function of supply and demand. It’s likely that the ratio is skewed too much toward the production of male-led films. It’s unlikely that demand would support the number of women-led films reaching parity, though. Their ticket sales aren’t double the male films’ sales.
B) if we’re concerned about which films make the most money, then the study shouldn’t just look at box office revenue
The most successful movies make a lot of their profits from licensing and merchandising. I don’t have any analysis of gendered product sales to point to, but I’ve seen a lot of anecdotal evidence suggesting that at least in America, the merchandise from live action movies (but not necessarily for animated films) sells better for films with male leads.
ps: your day-lewis analogy is a good one & makes me wish i had come up with a more elegant analogy than something involving urinals
This is probably just the fact that big budget female get a lot of clicks/attention but the majority of female lead films seem to be reboots/non original works that are using a female leads as the gimick. I am thinking of ghost busters or Ocean whatever…….To be fair though, that’s basically just a description of what Hollywood produces now.
female-fronted titles out-grossed male-led rivals on averageAm I the only one who misread this as “grossed-out”?
I’m here for this. And i’m not trying to be some guy whos super feminist and wants to be PC. Men have fucked this world up. Look at it. This world fucking sucks. In every way. I am 100% sure women cannot do worse than this shit show. Put women in charge of everything and I am confident that the world would improve in every way. Put women in more movies in better movies and watch them make more money. Voila! It’s magic!
Fake news at its finest. The fucking survey included Age of Ultron and Jurassic World. Two well known ‘feminists’ movies. Fuck off with this shit. No one with a brain believes it.
I’ve had people freak out on me for not liking Ghostbusters ‘16 or the 13th Doctor. No, I have no issue whatsoever with a woman lead. I do, however, have problems with women in shitty movies, the same way I have issues with men in shitty movies. I would have hated both of those examples if you flipped the genders and changed nothing else about them.
Cool story bro.
Heck, I don’t even have a problem with women in shitty movies, I just don’t like them rammed down my throat as “EXCELLENT.” Holy SHIT, I’m STILL pissed that I got thrown in the greys for DARING to state that Ghostbusters was a shitty movie…Yo, AVC!! Your readership wouldn’t be in the fucking toilet if you let people have their opinions and moderated out the HATE, rather than purging everyone who didn’t agree with your oft idiotic narrative.
You got exiled for an opinion? That’s terrible! Here, let me elevate you here at least.
Lol. I may have been less than polite while I expressed it… I just don’t like being called “misogynist” for hating that movie.
Sure, you can sell Star Wars: TLJ more times, to more people, than a New Hope, but that doesn’t make it better.This is the difference between something genuine and niche that excites people, and a PC- try to please everyone snoozefest that never excites people.
Come on, this is ridiculous. The numbers have clearly been massaged to change the results. I mean, they are counting The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi as male led movies, when Rey is clearly the lead. The numbers should be more in favor of female led movies.
I actually think it makes sense to exclude Episode 7 and 8 from the narrative. Let’s face it, they benefited from a killer brand name and a lot of fan anticipation. (Look how much the prequels made despite the complaining, and the arguable lack of any lead at all) For marketing purposes, an unknown actor playing a brand new character in a long-running popular
Like, put it this way, if one were to attribute the success of “The Force Awakens” to Daisy Ridley, that would mean “Training Day” would be all Ethan Hawke, not Denzel Washington. “Wanted” would be a “James MacAvoy film”, not an Angelina Jolie vehicle. It’s great that women are bankable and all, but let’s not confuse commercial inertia and nostalgia for progress, you know?
I love how this comment section starts with a brag about how the AV Club comments section is too good to hate women-led films, while the vast majority of other comments are expressing skepticism of the study (but only because they didn’t release their DATA! I don’t think their definition of women-led is good! Here’s how I, a MAN, would define a women-led movie!)
When it counts both Star Wars films led by Daisy Ridley as male-led, it’s right to express skepticism IMO
Nope! Your skepticism can ONLY be misogyny!/s
but only because they didn’t release their DATA!
That should always be a great reason to be skeptical. Feel-good headlines aren’t enough.
You should ALWAYS be skeptical of blind data studies/surveys.
If you aren’t skeptical, you need to start considering it. Otherwise you are ripe for manipulation. It doesn’t matter what the topic is. Statistics are too easily manipulated into whatever narrative wants to be told.
With this being said, that doesn’t mean THIS study doesn’t have any merits. It definitely disproves the idea that the majority of men are roving around boycotting and hating women led films. This is a good thing to know. Maybe we can let up a little on the blanket man-hating. Just a little. Not too much.
Yet all the highest grossing films of all time have male leads.
Don’t bet the farm on this “study”. It’s highly cherry-picked and has an extremely low bar. Bechdel is a low fucking bar. One technician telling another technician about how fast the asteroid is coming counts. A barista handing a customer a coffee and saying “thank you” before a male main character approaches counts.
Films in the category of huge budgets that would be more appropriate as “female-led” would be Star Wars 7&8 & Rogue One, the forthcoming Captain Marvel, Mortal Engines, Wrinkle in Time, Wonder Woman.
I think this is a case of a conclusion finding a study. I read the charts etc on the shift7 site, I would say that it’s encouraging, but a few films (The Billion Dollars female-led ones- 3x Star Wars, Jurassic World-I’d consider it a co-led with Pratt and Howard, Zootopia [holy shit that made $1B], Finding Dory, Beauty and the Beast) dragged the $100M budget category up.
I think Hollywood has already figured it out. It’s great, I have had a blast and as 37 year old manchild Rey is one of the first female protagonists that I identify with in ways and wish to emulate. She’s Luke to me, but a lot more relatable.
TL;DR- It’s a bit of gussied up PR speak, but Hollywood has already gotten the message. Black Widow’s getting her own film for crying out loud.
The next flame war? I guess I will make of it what I will. I went to see the Star Wars movies not because of Daisy Ridley, but because they are Star Wars, and the best Star Wars movie of them all is New Hope with the lowest female content and probably not passing the Bechdel Test. Of course when I was seven, those things didn’t matter to me. I have seen every Star Wars movie regardless of how it is classified.Nowadays I go to see what I want. My budget is limited. So Wonder Woman loved it. Aquaman will see it. Captain Marvel won’t see it.How about good stories, and good actors/actresses working together to create something worth watching.
Sorry, comments sections Reddit: Women-led films just make more moneyFTFY
This makes sense to me. As a guy, I don’t care who the lead role in a movie goes to if it looks good. I assume a good deal of women feel the same way. Then there are folks that will buy tickets specifically because there is a female lead. So that makes perfect sense that films with female leads make more. I’d guess that as this becomes more common it will probably even out as the social justice factor of female leads bleeds into the norm.Personally, I don’t know what people had been watching to think there haven’t been strong female characters residing outside of typical gender norms. I grew up in the 80’s and mid 90’s and my cartoons and movies almost always had strong females. She-Ra, the X-Men cartoon (Jean Grey, Storm, and Rogue were some of the strongest characters in general. Nice eye beams Cyke, all three can drop a tank on your face), Grace Jones and the character Valeria in the two Conan movies just to name a few. It should have been apparent to people that woman are just as capable of badassery as men for a long time now. it’s sad that it took so long for everyone to catch up.
Of all the reasons I hated The Last Jedi, neither Daisy Ridley being the lead or her acting abilities, were on that list.
I kinda wish we were past the point where anyone gave a solitary shit about any of this. I mean, it’s interesting that women-led movies have seen better box-office performance than those with men in the last few years, but stop treating it like some battle of the sexes cold war propaganda. Maybe the female-led movies were just “good” movies, and had absolutely nothing to do with gender. Can’t we just watch movies without making it about Bechdel Tests and such? Let’s not fan the flames of discord, and just relish the fact female representation in cinema is improving, and their movies are kicking box-office ass.
I’m chalking this up to the big C. I don’t know a single person who looks up whether or not a film passes the Bechdel Test prior to seeing it. If I did I very quickly wouldn’t know them anymore.I think the real takeaway here is that blockbusters are putting a heavier emphasis on catering to as many diverse audience pools as possible which…. duh?
TLJ is still garbage though.
Cool!
After the entire history of film you can now say that. Once.
I get that the study is supposed to be proof that female lead movies can generate as much as male led films but that’s a bit different than the agenda that this article is trying to convey.So here is some stuff you didnt talk about.-Not mentioned in the article is that this report was commissioned by the Times Up group. So this study came out really well for the people that commissioned it which should immediately make you scrutinize it if not out right dismiss it. -3 years out of over 100 years of cinema is do not generate enough statistics for anyone to bet on.-9-10 of the top grossing films this year are male leads.I wonder if this was just a short streak or if maybe there just still isnt enough data to make such a sweeping statement?
The problem with the study is the conclusion it reaches despite the massive, massive disparity between the number of male- and female-led movies looked at. All they did was take the top-grossing 350 movies from 2014-2017. In the set, there are naturally far more male-led movies than female-led movies, and the gap widens as you go up the budget scale.There’s no way to tell that, if we suddenly saturated the market with female-led movies, those larger profit figures would hold up. Are there that many more stories to tell? Are they all just as compelling and audience-grabbing? There’s no way to tell, and the study doesn’t even attempt to account for it.Is the study enough to cause a simple wake-up call? Sure. But the way some people are waving it around as hard evidence in support of a broader case is a reasonable cause for skepticism. The study is very barebones, not some standout example of sturdy academic research or something.
Does this mean we can expect some content on Dumplin’ in the coming week?
This makes me so happy. I have absolutely no problem with women-led films, and I just love the kinds of empowering movies my daughter can watch.Unlike my brother-in-law, I know strong women don’t make me any less of a man.
It would be interesting to break it down further and factor in recurring performances. If you think that the majority of movies in the last decade have been remakes or sequels (which almost always gross less) then the predominately male leads would also suffer (statistically). Meanwhile actresses can be more fluid in movie choices and be in more diverse roles. Its hard to think of any actress that gets type cast as much as most males. Scarlet Johansson is in avengers and ghost in the shell (kinda similar) but shes also in jungle book and Her and under the skin. Meanwhile Chris Pratt is an idiot in a leather vest falling down a lot in marvel movies and jurrassic park. All of which set all time records but also sharp decreases on sequels. Daniel Craig is nowhere to be seen except for the freefall that is this run of bond movies.
Call me a homophobe, but I’d rather watch Daisy Ridley or Gal Gadot than Jason Statham or Vin Diesel any day of the week.
My first thought on this is that Annihilation didn’t get nearly as many views as it should. Watch it on demand everybody. It’s great. The theater viewing probably helped the great atmosphere, but man, the movie is awesome.