Filmmaker and actress Elizabeth Banks was apparently anticipating her “Charlie’s Angels” reboot bombing at the box office and preemptively blamed men and sexism for its inevitable failure.
As noted by The Daily Wire on Sunday, the new feminist-lecturing “Charlie’s Angels” had a budget of $48 million before marketing costs. On opening weekend, the flick took in a mere $8.6 million domestically, and scored $19.3 million for its global haul, totally just $26.1 million worldwide.
Before opening weekend, Banks, who wrote, directed, and starred in the film, laid out some excuses for its soon-to-come flop. The main culprit? Sexism, of course.
“Look, people have to buy tickets to this movie, too. This movie has to make money,” Banks told the Herald Sun, IndieWire reported. “If this movie doesn’t make money it reinforces a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go see women do action movies.”
As noted by IndieWire, Banks’ excuse is questionable, since films that feature women in action movies, like “Captain Marvel” and “Wonder Woman” performed quite well at the box office: “Earlier this year, the Brie Larson-starring ‘Captain Marvel’ grossed $426 million in the U.S. and over $1.1 billion at the worldwide box office. ‘Wonder Women’ ended its summer 2017 run with $821 million worldwide,” the outlet noted.
Banks’ rationale for this is that men will go see female-starring action films if they are comic book movies.
“They’ll go and see a comic book movie with Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel because that’s a male genre,” the filmmaker told the Sun. “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.’”
“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,” Banks added.
Speaking with The Wall Street Journal before “Charlie’s Angels” opening weekend, Banks defended Hollywood’s “reboot fever” and again alluded to sexism.
“You’ve had 37 Spider-Man movies and you’re not complaining!” she told the Journal. “I think women are allowed to have one or two action franchises every 17 years—I feel totally fine with that.”
Of course, Banks played a role in Marvel’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man 3.
“Being in a big franchise allows you to have it all. I recognize the same thing, it’s almost unfair for women. The best roles are usually in small movies, but then you don’t make any money. It’s okay to want to make money,” she added.
Focusing on the issue of supposed sexism, IndieWire asked the 45-year-old about potential anti-feminist “trolls” sabotaging her audience reviews.
“‘Charlie’s Angels’ has always been about women, and the DNA of it is about women working together on this team,” she told the outlet. “We are not treading in a male space. I think that’s one of the big differences between these two things. I don’t know, I’m less concerned about that. Of course, those trolls are horrifying, but you know, I challenge them to get up and make a f***ing movie action movie. I welcome any of them into my realm.”
H/t IndieWire