The heroes of Sony Pictures' Charlie's Angels
reboot may have taken down the bad guys, but
the Elizabeth Banks-directed movie failed
to take down the box office.
Now, an interview with Banks, who wrote, produced,
directed, and starred in the new Charlie's
Angels movie, reveals where she thinks the
blame rests.
"My name is Bosley, and I'm gonna kick your
ass!"
Speaking with The Herald Sun before the film's
November 15th release, Banks blamed at least
part of her film's potential, and then eventual,
box office failure on a mix of a growing streaming
culture and the sexism that exists both among
audiences and those in the film industry.
For Banks, battling the hurdle of, in her
words, "getting people off their couches to
pay a babysitter, buy dinner, buy popcorn"
is tough but necessary to advance women in
film.
She added,
"Look, people have to buy tickets to this
movie, too.
This movie has to make money.
If this movie doesn't make money, it reinforces
a stereotype in Hollywood that men don't go
see women do action movies."
Banks went even further by pointing more specifically
to the performance of female-led superhero
franchises like DC's Wonder Woman and Marvel's
Captain Marvel as proof of a gender gap she
says exists in films and within specific genres.
As she sees it, men will naturally show up
more for comic book movies starring women
than they wouldl for female-led films like
the Charlie's Angels reboot because the former
are still within a male-focused genre.
Banks stated,
"They'll go and see a comic book movie with
Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel because that's
a male genre.
So even though those are movies about women,
they put them in the context of feeding the
larger comic book world, so it's all about,
yes, you're watching a Wonder Woman movie,
but we're setting up three other characters,
or we're setting up Justice League."
Wonder Woman ultimately proved itself to be
a worthy watch for both male and female viewers,
earning $821 million worldwide at the box
office when it debuted in June 2017.
Meanwhile, Captain Marvel left her mark by
becoming the eighth Marvel Cinematic Universe
movie and first female-led film in the MCU's
11-year history to earn more than $1 billion
at the box office.
The Charlie's Angels director and actress
did take the time to clarify her statement,
noting,
"By the way, I'm happy for those characters
to have box office success.
But we need more women's voices supported
with money because that's the power.
The power is in the money."
The Sony action-comedy cost somewhere between
$48 million and $55 million to make, but made
only $27.9 million worldwide during its opening
weekend.
Domestically, it earned an abysmal $8.6 million,
lower than the studio's conservative box office
estimations, which predicted around $10 million
in first-weekend stateside earnings.
In a separate interview with The Wall Street
Journal, Banks somewhat piggy-backed off her
superhero statements to The Herald Sun by
going for another significant, but this time,
male-led, Marvel franchise.
She pointed out,
"You've had 37 Spider-Man movies, and you're
not complaining!
I think women are allowed to have one or two
action franchises every 17 years, I feel totally
fine with that."
Still, as Banks chalks her film's poor performance
up to gender disparities, other industry experts
are turning to a different issue, one that
might mean more problems ahead for studios
with long-standing, big-budget franchises.
Charlie's Angels is just one of several reboots
and franchise extensions that have delivered
way below box office expectations recently.
Terminator: Dark Fate suffered an insane failure
during its opening weekend earlier in November.
Films like Hellboy, Men in Black: International,
X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and Godzilla: King of
the Monsters are also among the biggest box
office flops of 2019.
As The Hollywood Reporter points out, the
flop of Charlie's Angels may be a combination
of franchise fatigue and overblown financial
expectations.
If it's any consolation, Banks was able to
make a film that had women leading it both
in front of and behind the camera, and that's
a win no matter which way you look at it.
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