Charlize Theron

Female-Driven Films Profit, So Why Aren’t More Being Made?

January 26, 2016 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Kaiti Hsu for “Variety

“It’s good business to cast strong women in lead movie roles. Last summer’s opening weekend was a master class on femi-nomics when “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Pitch Perfect 2” faced off on May 15 — and both films came out ahead.

“Mad Max: Fury Road,” directed by George Miller, starred Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa, a rebel opposite Tom Hardy’s Max. No distressed damsel, the character with her own story arc was so tough the choice ignited a backlash that the franchise had gone fanatically feminist. As for “Pitch Perfect 2,” the sequel directed by co-star Elizabeth Banks featured Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson and Hailee Steinfeld in a femme-friendly musical comedy.

By the numbers, “Mad Max” cost an estimated $150 million to make. Opening weekend reaped $44 million, with worldwide grosses at $375 million and $153 domestically. Meanwhile, “Pitch Perfect 2” cost an estimated $29 million to make, opened to a $70 million weekend, grossed $285 million worldwide and $183 million domestic. Both films had strong female stars but represented very different genres — and the more female-focused of the two had the better return on investment.

More recently, Emily Blunt proved her box office chops in “Sicario,” in which she stars as an FBI agent who gets a crash course in the drug war, with Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro as her dubious mentors. Lionsgate Entertainment opened the $30 million thriller on Sept. 18 in platform release in six venues with a whopping $65,000 per-theater average.

“The numbers speak for themselves. Period. Worldwide grosses for ‘Pitch Perfect 2’ and ‘Cinderella’ were over $800 million. Clearly women aren’t the only ones going to see these movies,” says Academy member Peggy Rajski, associate arts professor/head of producing, NYU Graduate Film Program.

Looking back in 2015, whether we love or love-to-hate “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the female-directed (Sam Taylor-Johnson), female-led (Dakota Johnson) literary adaptation of the bondage bestseller had a benchmark year. On an estimated $40 million budget, the movie grabbed a worldwide gross of $570 million, with a $94 million opening weekend.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” is a sexy potboiler that could not be more different from “Mad Max,” “Pitch Perfect 2,” “Cinderella” or “Sicario.” In short, the house of female-driven cinema has many, many rooms — most of them as yet unexplored. Meanwhile, two novel-based, female-driven sequels are already in development: “Fifty Shades Darker” is in the script stage and slated for 2017, while “Fifty Shades Freed” has been announced for a 2018 release.

The massive success of “Fifty Shades of Grey” reflects the way in which the movie industry has put bias before good business practices. The book industry has long-known that women are among their most avid readers with the household purchase power behind them. It’s not news that the “Twilight Saga” was an established literary franchise long before it made Kristen Stewart famous and, in four films, grossed over a billion dollars.

“The Hunger Games” trilogy, stretched to four movies, made Jennifer Lawrence a major star by keeping true to the novels’ winning female-driven recipe. With the final installment, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2” opening on Nov. 20 in time for the Thanksgiving sweep, the franchise has grossed Lionsgate $2.2 billion so far.

Beyond the event movies, female-driven comedies are on the rise. Both Melissa McCarthy’s “Spy” (worldwide $236 million) and Amy Schumer’s “Trainwreck” (worldwide $138 million) were R-rated summer hits. Amy Poehler and Tina Fey hope to capture Christmas with the upcoming “Sisters.”

It comes as no surprise that given the opportunity, female-driven films connect with audiences. Rajski raises the question: “Over half the world’s population is female. Why wouldn’t you target that audience more aggressively?”

The gender gap is bad business: as Oscar winner Meryl Streep pointed out in 2012: “Why? Why? Why? Don’t they want the money?” Her question echoes three years later, begging for a shareholders’ revolt. Female-driven movies make money. In an era when movies are beset by competition from quality television, video games and alternative entertainment, the industry can’t afford to be biased.

{This story first appeared in the October 06, 2015 issue of Variety.)

Is ‘Mad Max’ Furiously Feminist — or Just the New Normal

May 30, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Hardy, Theron: jerky tough., no words wasted.

I am among the first people to wave the feminist flag. I believe in female empowerment, the right to choose, and even our right to choose and make mistakes. The simple definition. I pay my tab. But I’m uncertain whether it’s a step forward to hail the futuristic sci-fi film Mad Max: Fury Road, which I reviewed here, as a feminist film. I agree with the Guardian’s Jessica Valenti to a point. And she made many good ones Including this:

The movie, as has been said by others, is glorious: beautifully shot, fun, fast-paced and, yes, feminist. And if the popularity of the film is any indication (global cumulative box office is already $227m) this iteration of Mad Max shows that movie audiences are thrilled by its female action heroes, a plot that shows the necessity of dismantling patriarchies and its “leading” man who supports the real hero – the leading lady.

What I would like to argue, both with and against my colleague Valenti, is that the film has taken a step toward normalizing the images of women we see on the screen. That isn’t just feminist, it’s humanist. (Oh, and good business, too.) Charlize Theron, who plays the female heroine Furiosa opposite Tom Hardy’s burly Max, has a three-dimensional role with a past, present and hopefully a future. That she has one arm suggests a story that remains largely untold here, a past hinted at and shaping the character she reflects in those steely blue eyes beneath the damn-it-all buzz cut.

It is like we have become so starved for strong, full female characters in the desert of Hollywood mainstream movies that we jump on Furiosa as feminist. And, of course, she is and kudos to (male) director George Miller and screenwriters Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris for normalizing their stories. I embrace this, although we live in a ridiculous pop cultural amnesia zone that forgets that Hollywood gave us the great Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire, or Claudette Colbert in The Palm Beach Story or Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind or Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz or Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and ….

And we don’t want to overlook the fact that while there is a small posse of crones (those invisible women over 45) that supports Furiorosa in her battle against, well, ok, the Patriarchy (or just the yukky bad guys), there is also a harem of bulimic, bee-stung lipped supermodels to satisfy the core audience. Lord knows where these chicks got all that conditioner in that futuristic wasteland but I’ll accept that lack of continuity. But remember how Miller introduces the breeders in a male fantasy display as these stunners of many colors wash their long, skinny limbs (and, for some, sensually bulbous pregnant bellies). The dystopic wet-T-shirt scene reminded me of the supermodel gas station frolic in Zoolander.

So, yes, Jessica Valenti and the many more women including my sisters at the feministmadmax Tunblr who stride up to call Mad Max a feminist film. For me, it’s another step toward normalizing the images of women on screen to reflect the badass beings that we are — from the time we are young fillies to our wise crone-ship.

Hardy Boy Drives ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ to Fast and Furious Action

May 15, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Hardy, Theron: jerky tough., no words wasted.

The original Mad Max, the 1979 nihilistic low-budget death derby starring a beautiful yet crazy Aussie unknown, Mel Gibson, was the movie that first turned me on to action. This was testosterone, baby, and I was an estrogen-pumping college student in Berkeley catching Manhattan and Meatballs and Mr. Hulot’s Holiday. Enter Gibson and Director George Miller, angry and furious and driving the rusty old engine of cinema into the dusty dystopic future. I was exhilarated. And I was hooked. Blame them, or own it, I became an action junkie.

The Max madder-than-hell, I’m angry and I’m not going to take it any more sequels always overstretched the simple premise of the original, going to Thunderdome and beyond. I’ll leave it to the diehard online list-makers to rank these films like so many kindergartners sitting on mats learning their numbers for the first time. And, so, it is with relief and joy that I pick up with Hardy, an absolute favorite of mine, with his manly-man Max a pussycat compared to his Bronson performance.

Hardy inhabits the titular hero – all scarred muscle and tortured eyes and more flashbacks than a habitual LSD user — in a movie that is as linear and relentless as the original. There’s birth and death and the question becomes how much torture, inhumanity and deprivation an individual has to survive until that final apocalypse (or Valhalla depending on your faith).
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Adams on Reel Women: ‘Snow White & the Huntsman’ — it isn’t pretty!

June 10, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Beauty Queen Charlize (by Universal Pictures)

Beauty is a bitch. That’s always animated the Snow White story: Vanity and jealousy drive the evil stepmother queen to slip Snow White that poisoned apple. Now, along comes “Snow White and the Huntsman,” which is all about teasing out the backstory of these Grimm characters and asking, “Why?”

Why is it so important to know who’s the fairest of them all, a question the magic mirror never answers. For Queen Ravenna, played with Joan Crawford relish by Oscar winner Charlize Theron, the answer is an exposé of Hollywood’s obsession with feminine beauty and aging, and chasing after the next unwrinkled new young thing (whether that’s Kristen Stewart or Elizabeth Olsen or Rooney Mara).

Statuesque blonde Theron, 36, tears into the beauty theme, a variation on past roles. She won her Oscar for playing a repulsive serial killer in “Monster”; last year, she courted another as the morally ugly husband stalker in “Young Adult.” In “Snow White and the Huntsman,” we see Queen Ravenna in her full glory on her wedding day as she glances back over her shoulder and a cascade of golden waves at the young girl who will grow up to be her archrival. The queen has closed the deal with the king, Snow White’s widowed father, in 24 hours on looks alone. Beauty is her power. It’s also her obsession — and her weakness. The parallel is clear: As an A-list star, Theron’s superlative beauty is her commodity, but she’s always looking over her shoulder at the next girl, and the next.

What extremes will Queen Ravenna go to in order to maintain her primacy? It’s a high-maintenance business. The scenes in which she ages rapidly are riveting, showing the wrinkles curdle her flesh as she morphs into that crone who in fairy-tale books offers up the poisoned apple to Snow White (played here by Kristen Stewart). When the queen begins to sag, and bags form under her eyes, she grabs a young beauty from the dungeon and sucks out her soul like a McDonald’s shake. Ravenna’s youthful glow returns.

The movie goes one step further by expressing the anger that Ravenna feels about this cruel joke: beauty and aging. On her wedding night, she flings her wrath at her royal groom [spoiler alert], blaming him for the evil she is about to do because men are so in thrall to surface beauty. (Why can’t they just love me for me?) Then she neatly skewers him with a dagger. Sexism made her do it.

Queen Ravenna has a soul sister in Queen Cersei (Lena Headey) on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Cersei is gorgeous on the outside and corrupt within (she’s had three kids with her own brother, Jaime Lannister). In this season’s penultimate episode, Cersei drunkenly counsels her son’s dewy fiancée, Sansa Stark, that being beautiful isn’t powerful in itself; a woman has to use her beauty like a weapon in the ongoing war for dominance. To paraphrase the wicked yet compelling queen: In times of war, women have to use what’s between their legs.

In “Game of Thrones,” as in “Snow White and the Huntsman,” female anger at male sexism is an undercurrent of the beauty discussion. Cersei vents that her father taught her brother Jaime how to fight with a sword, while all she learned was to smile and curtsy and dance. He learned how to kill; she learned how to seduce. When Dad dispatched Jaime to war and adventure, he married Cersei off to a stranger, traded like a horse for a family alliance. Cersei seethes — and, like Ravenna, she’s so compelling when she’s angry!

Both “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Game of Thrones” examine the beauty myth and the extreme lengths that aging stunners will go to to maintain their gifts and their control of power by sexual conquest. In addition, as the queens attempt to squelch or absorb their younger rivals, they demonstrate the difficulty of sisterhood across generations. “You are lucky to never know what it is to grow old!” Queen Ravenna cries to Stewart’s Snow White — as she tries to see that the younger woman will never live to cash a Social Security check. And so don’t expect an alliance between Queen Ravenna and Snow White or Cersei Lannister and Sansa Stark — major-league feminine beauty is a cruel taskmaster and rarely a team sport.

This column originally appeared on Yahoo! Movies.

Yahoo! exclusive: Charlize Theron in “Young Adult”

December 11, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Photo by Paramount Pictures

Forever Young: Charlize Theron Won’t Grow Up as the Aging Prom Queen from Hell in ‘Young Adult’

By Thelma Adams | The Reel Breakdown – Fri, Dec 9, 2011 6:38 PM EST

t last night’s “Young Adult” premiere, Oscar-nominated Jason Reitman bounded in front of the curtain at Manhattan’s Ziegfeld Theatre and welcomed the audience to “our unmakable movie.” The director went on to say, about Oscar-winner Diablo Cody: “It was really brave for her to write it, and really brave for Charlize to star in it.”This level of bravery may seem tame to our troops in Iraq, or to Chinese political prisoners, or to the sexually brutalized women in Angelina Jolie’s “In the Land of Blood and Honey.” But we can agree that it’s about bloody time that a multifaceted lead female character behave unsympathetically without having to reach the extreme of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in “Monster,” which earned Theron her Oscar in 2003. Read on….

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