On the surface of things they are unfair comparisons as the likes of Superman, Batman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are commonly more known than Supergirl, Tank Girl and Catwoman, but that’s not how Hollywood sees it. In the Hollywood studio system, all comic book movies are the same and they all have the same level of popularity. Never is that more true than 1999’s Mystery Men. Despite being based on a very obscure underground comic with a small cult following, Paramount put in a ridiculous $70 million into its production budget – and the movie made only $33 million worldwide. Steven de Souza (writer of Die Hard) told me that Universal put that amount of money into the movie because they thought that because they’re are both based on comics, Mystery Men would make the same box office as Tim Burton’s Batman. But in the end they didn’t get Batman box office, they got Mystery Men box office.
Side-story #1: To further illustrate how much Hollywood perceives comic book adaptations, when Mystery Men tanked at the box office Paramount slashed the budget of the producer’s next project: Tomb Raider. According to de Souza the studio felt that video games and comic books came “from the same source material” which was now seen as box office poison.
This is why several attempts to make movies based on female comic book characters have fallen by the wayside. Hollywood is afraid of failure, so when something fails they drop all plans that are similar to it. When Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life failed to live up to the expectations set by the first film, MGM Studios cancelled their plans for a James Bond spin-off movie featuring Halle Berry’s character from Die Another Day. Daniel Waters had penned a script for a Catwoman movie in the mid-90s that would have been set after the events of Batman Returns with Michelle Pfeiffer returning to the role, but it was handed in on the same day Batman Forever opened big at the box office – making Water’s darker piece based on a female character more of a risk when compared to Joel Schumacher’s lighter adventures for The Dark Knight. A Wonder Woman movie has been on the cards at Warner Bros. since 1996 with names like Joel Silver, Ivan Reitman and Joss Whedon attached in various capacities along with Sandra Bullock looking to star, but script delays and poor box office performances from both Elektra and Catwoman put too much fear into the studio to greenlight it.
Side story #2: This isn’t a gender thing either. In the late 1990s when movies like Batman & Robin, Steel and Mystery Men were failing at the box office, 20th Century Fox scrapped all their plans for their Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer movies (despite paying a lot of money for scripts to be written) and wouldn’t return to the characters until the subgenre was popular again. And speaking of Fantastic Four, plans for a sequel to Josh Trank’s version were canned when last year’s production disaster bombed. So were plans for a sequel to Terminator: Genysis. Hell, even all the plans for an expanded Spider-Man universe were put on ice following the poor box office for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. As said earlier, Hollywood is afraid of failure.
When it comes to a lack of a Black Widow solo movie in the MCU, sexism and misogyny don’t factor as much as the Internet would like you to think. The fact that Captain Marvel is getting her first movie over a decade after Nick Fury first met Tony Stark has little to do with her gender and more to do with the failures of the past featuring her gender. Had Catwoman and Elektra been bigger hits during that 2000s comic book movie boom, we would have seen Wonder Woman greenlit and a whole host of other female characters on the big screen.
However Marvel Studios are now in a position where they can take a risk – as the studio system sees it – to put out a female-led superhero movie as they’ve yet to find failure. Phase One of the MCU was full of safe bets – Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Thor and The Avengers – and Phase Two continued that trend with sequels to those now successful properties. However they tested the waters of their success by announcing two unknown quantities: Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. Ant-Man was placed into Phase Two because it had been in development since 2005 (read more about that here), but if Guardians of the Galaxy – a Z-list property that few had heard of – could be a box office hit, then anything could be a hit. As soon as that movie earned over $700 million, “riskier” titles like Captain Marvel and Black Panther were now sure-fire deals.
Hollywood aren’t interested in pushing the envelope, they’re not interested in being creative or different – they’re interested in making money. Looking at the track record of previous female-led superhero movies, there is a clear reason why Marvel Studios and Disney haven’t given Black Widow her own movie just yet. The numbers just didn’t add up. But when Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel do well at the box office – and they will – we’ll see more greenlit. All it takes is one hit, and the studios will change their mind. I may not like the look of the movie, but I’m hoping Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters does well or we won’t see any female-led tentpole comedies any time soon. As an audience, we tell studios what sort of movies we want to see. We gave Disney a lot of money to watch The Avengers, and so every studio began to greenlight comic book universes. I’ve mentioned several times on the Flickering Myth Podcast that if Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed do well we’ll see a lot more video game movies making their way to the production schedule in the coming years. It’s not a gender issue, it’s a business issue.
Hollywood isn’t afraid of women, they’re just afraid of failure.
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the co-host of The Flickering Myth Podcast and Scooperhero News. You can follow him on Twitter @ThisisLukeOwen and read his weekly feature The Week in Star Wars.
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Originally published May 10, 2016. Updated November 29, 2022.
