Girl-Powered Movies Made Up Six Of The Top Ten Films At Last Weekend's Box Office

There was a lot of talk about how the robust $69 million debut weekend of Anna Kendrick's Pitch Perfect 2 proved (yet again) that female-centric franchise fare could score top-tier debut weekends without much help from male audiences. And there was much talk about the robust $45 million debut of Mad Max: Fury Road whereby a 70% male crowd lined up for an action spectacular that centered on a female character (played by Charlize Theron) and involved explicit commentary on the real-world illogic of a patriarchal system that treated half of the world's population as chattel. Something that got less notice, and I will admit intending to write this earlier in the week, was that the weekend box office was dominated by films that were either explicitly female-centric or mostly female-targeted. Of the top 12 films in last weekend's box office charts, eight of them were female-centric in nature. Moreover, three of them were somewhat gender-neutral. Only one wide release in the top twelve was wholly male-centric. 

In short, of the top twelve films in last weekend's box office charts, eight of them were unquestionably female-driven stories. They are, in descending order of rank, Pitch Perfect 2, Mad Max: Fury Road, Hot Pursuit, The Age of Adeline, Home, Far From a Madding Crowd, The Woman in Gold, and Cinderella. Of the remaining four, two (Avengers: Age of Ultron and Furious 7) were stereotypically male-centric ensemble action-ers that had a few female characters and an avowed female following. One (Ex Machina) was an arty sci-fi film with two somewhat dominant male characters and two somewhat subservient female characters in a story precisely about the icky gender issues at play. Only Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, a sequel that writes out two of the original film's major female characters in the film's opening scenes,  sits alone as the one unquestionably boy-centric film of the lot. 

These films all came from major and minor studios (Universal/ Comcast Corp., Warner Bros./ Time Warner Inc., Lions Gate Entertainment, A24, DreamWorks Animation , Fox Searchlight, Weinstein Company, and Walt Disney) All of them played in multiplex releasing in theaters all around the country. They were musical comedies, action adventures, buddy comedies, animated sci-fi spectacles, and romantic dramas. Some are very good; others are very bad. And they all, as a combined cumulative gross (forgive me, but I'm going to care about cumulative gross just this once), they represent indisputable proof that female-centric films can and do make money at the multiplex/wide release/major studio level. Heck, even going further down the charts gives you the likes of The Divergent Series: Insurgent,  Unfriended (a gender-neutral horror tale that focuses on a female would-be victim), and Disneynature's Monkey Kingdom, which (for better or worse) technically counts as a princess story.

Even if you want to discount the older films, six out of just the top ten films in release last weekend were unquestionably female-centric. This weekend brings the gender-neutral (although arguably Sam Rockwell-focused) Poltergeist while Brad Bird's Tomorrowland has not one, but two female characters (played by the terrific Britt Robertson and the promising Raffey Cassidy) as the protagonists, so it stands to reason that the overall scope of the gender divide in the weekend rankings won't change too much. I won't pretend that this divide will remain into the summer as the likes of Aloha!,  San Andreas,  Jurassic World, and Entourage arguably outnumber the likes of Melissa McCarthy's Spy and Pixar's Inside Out. However, it bears a mention when the evidence is this stark.

We like to point to one big blockbuster or another as evidence that female-centric films can be blockbusters as examples in a vacuum. Look at Hunger Games!  Look at Bridesmaids! Look at Fifty Shades of Grey! However, this weekend had significantly more female-centric options in wide release than the same weekends in 2014 and 2013 (2013 basically had zero), and yet this weekend's cumulative box office ($184m) was higher than the same weekend in 2014 ($178m) and 2013 ($153m) respectively. This weekend had significantly more female-centric multiplex options than the same weekend over the last several years and this weekend had a higher cumulative gross than any other frame over this same period.

Call it causation, call it correlation, or merely call it coincidence. Come what may, last weekend showed that a Hollywood release slate with copious female-centric options at the multiplex did not harm the overall box office one bit. Not all of these films are good, not all of them are explicitly "feminist" and not all of them are necessarily marketed in a way that highlights their female-centric nature. Yet they are major studio releases, playing at a theater near you, that star women, tell stories concerning women, and (in some cases) concern relationships and conflicts at least tangentially related to the gender of their protagonists and/or antagonists. However, they exist, and they are making money.

As news comes of the A.C.L.U.'s letter concerning gender equity in Hollywood gathers steam, as more actresses and female filmmakers speak out about systematic exclusion, and as more anecdotal stories like 37-year old Maggie Gyllenhaal being told that she was too old to play the love interest of a 55-year old actor come to light, this stuff matters. Last weekend,this weekend, and many more weekends to come serve as evidence that female-centric films should not be considered a niche or a sub-genre, but rather an equal and equally important part of a potentially thriving theatrical business. Now I can go back to not caring about cumulative weekend box office totals.