A report released this week by Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and technology company Shift7 shows box office performances of female-lead movies beating out male-driven movies - and that is shaking deeply-held perceptions in Hollywood.
Top CAA agent, Christy Haubegger, said "In our business, there is a lot of bias disguising itself as knowledge. The perception that it's not good business to have female leads is not true. They're a marketing asset."
The CAA report, done in conjunction with Shift7 and prompted by the women's activist movement, Times Up, was motivated by the desire to pressure the powers that be to cast more women and people of color in leading roles.
Many have long contended that enhanced diversity is good for business and could pump up profits. Now they have the data to prove it.
The report showed that in every budget range from under $10 million to over $100 million, the top movies from 2014 to 2017 starring female leads took their male-led competitors to the mat, out-performing them across the board.
Amy Pascal, former Chair of Sony Pictures, said, "This is powerful proof that audiences want to see everyone represented on screen. Decision-makers in Hollywood need to pay attention to this."
The movers and shakers in the group include: Pascal; former Chief Technology Officer for the United States under President Barack Obama, Megan Smith; CAA power agent, Alexandra Trustman; Liza Chasin, Executive Producer of Academy Award winning Darkest Hour and Baby Driver; and Academy Award-winning actor, Geena Davis, a longtime advocate of metric-supported equality casting in Hollywood.
Beauty and the Beast [Photo/Mtime]
"It's about time," Geena Davis, founder and Chair of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media told Xinhua. "Having women and girls on screen in meaningful roles is good on so many levels: It's good for women, good for our children looking for role models - and just plain good for business."
Davis has been a leader in commissioning and tracking real data on gender issues and representation in the media since 2004 and is pleased that her findings dovetail nicely with those CAA's report received from Gracenote, a data company owned by America's leading media research and ratings group, Nielsen Media Research.
Wonder Woman, starring everyone's favorite role model, Gal Gadot, is the film that blew the lid off Hollywood's glass ceiling, powering Warner Brothers to a $821 million worldwide box office payday. The sequel, Wonder Woman 1984, is already in the works.
Global megahits Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.1 billion worldwide) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($1.3 billion worldwide) were also both female-lead films starring talented British actor, Daisy Ridley, as the young Jedi Master, Rey, as was Disney's Beauty and the Beast ($1.26 billion dollars worldwide), starring Emma Watson.
Other stand-out female starers included Universal's Halloween, starring the iconic Jamie Curtis, which was not only the biggest female-starring horror opener, but also the highest-grossing open for any movie with a female star over fifty-five years of age.
The report also indicates that films with a strong female and male lead power duos are also going toe-to-toe with high-testosterone, bad-boys-club superhero pics, like John Krasinski and Emily Blunt's A Quiet Place, Constance Wu and Henry Golding's Crazy Rich Asians, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga's, A Star is Born, Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly's Ant Man and the Wasp, Chris Pratt's and Bryce Dallas Howard's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and many more.
Also of note is that every film that reached the $1 billion club in worldwide box office receipts also passed the Bechdel Test. This requires that (1) the film have at least two women in it; (2) the two women talk to each other in the film; and (3) they talk about something other than a man.
Though admittedly a low bar to hurdle, it is nonetheless an important indicator of the types of films that resonate with today's audiences and lead to higher returns.
But, according to San Diego State University, with only a quarter of recent films starring females as the sole lead, and women playing only a third of starring roles in general, Hollywood still has a long way to go to reach parity.
