Saturday, October 06, 2007

I'm not flying off the handle... Yet...

(Via) From Newsarama:
According to LA Weekly’s Nikki Finke, Warners isn’t interested in making films with female leads. Her source? Warner Bros president of production Jeff Robinov who Finke quotes (through three sources) as saying: "We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead." Finke said that Robinov's sentiment/statement was confirmed by three producers
Original source here. Finke doesn't name the producers, just says there are three people verifying it.

Okay, maybe I'm flying off the handle just a bit. Kalinara is trying to talk me out of titling this post "Fuck you, Warner Bros."

A quick search on GoogleNews brings this article to light, which still pisses me off to no avail. Assuming the producer in question really is this much of a moron:
On a purely business level, though, if Robinov's declaration is more along the lines of "We are no longer doing action movies with women in the lead"... I'm afraid he's entirely justified. This isn't because a woman can't carry an action movie, but a acknowledgment of the deeply shitty reality that there isn't a single filmmaker or producer in town who knows how to develop an femme-led action movie that plays to the male quadrant (television is a completely different ballgame).

And it's a failure of imagination, really. In a way, I'd much rather see Jessica Biel as a former Navy SEAL assigned to track down terrorists threatening to blow up the Anheuser-Busch brewery. But no studio would ever greenlight Biel in a role developed for, say, Mark Wahlberg because they'd first call up the respectable grosses Underworld, Kill Bill and the Resident Evil movies, and, then, contrast those numbers with the not-so-good returns for Elektra, Aeon Flux, Domino, Catwoman, Ultraviolet, Point of No Return and, for the hell of it, V.I. Warshawski. And then they'd conclude that the risk is too high for the modest-at-best reward.


It sounds like they're using the logic that since Catwoman fucked up they don't want a female action lead because they assume all female pictures will suck. To which I'd suggest that maybe if they put more effort into making a female-lead movie work, like say a decent script, some dedication to the source material, and a good director rather than just assuming that big boobs will work box office magic they might find that female-led pictures would make more money.

Interestingly enough, CHUD above suggests that they know this, but might not willing to dedicate the necessary resources to a female-led movie because its a female led movie -- the logic of which pisses me off as much as the original unverified quote.

8 comments:

  1. I'm just pointing out that so far, no one's really shown any corrobeorating proof.

    It's perfectly believable that he'd say something like that. It could easily be true. But so far, I haven't seen anyone even try to contact the folks in question to confirm. Not even a "We tried to contact them, but they had no comment."

    I'm all for the "fuck you" sentiment, if this is true. But the CHUD article also points out a few reason Finke's information might be incomplete or questionable. It shouldn't be that hard to get corroborating evidence.

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  2. I'm still trying to decide if its a good or bad thing if the resulting annoyance gives them a kick in the butt to make the Wonder Woman movie.

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  3. I'd be happy if it got us something new a.la Alien.

    Our generation needs its own Ripley, damnit. :-)

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  4. Like the logic behind X-MEN 3:

    "Hey guys, let's put the man responsible for RUSH HOUR, RUSH HOUR 2 and the upcoming RUCH HOUR 3 in charge. Yup, X3 is in safe hands!"

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  5. Even if it isn't true, it does point toward a problem across the board. I have watched quite a few films made in the first quarter of the twentieth century, before the Hayes Code, and something I noticed was that the films seemed more "female-positive" or "female-centric" than many contemporary films. One book I read, "Complicated Women", points out that, even though we've had second-wave and third-wave feminism, we just don't have a film industry that's very interested in women's narratives, for one reason or another.

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  6. grrr....my comment was eaten up.

    :(

    I guess, mostly, I don't actually care if he said it or not. The movies say it for him. We don't need a confession to prove guilt in this case.

    And that's what makes me mad. That it's as if it's only a bad thing if he says it out loud, the actual doing of it doesn't matter.

    Which makes me feeling cynical enough to jump all over him no matter what.

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  7. I think this is a case where some blood should be drawn. You've got a clearly legitimate causus belli, and a chance to score some real progress.

    (Don't jump all over the clearly legitimate here please, I'm only implying that this is a slam-dunk case you can go after where there's very little grey area.)

    The question is- what do you go after though? The film division, or the whole company (which does include DC Comics...)

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  8. Jeff -- Oh, that's clearcut. Film. Robinov is like the film production counterpart of Paul Levitz. You can't attach anything he says to comics.

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