Marvel hasn’t had the best track record when it comes to female-led projects until very recently. Many in the past have critiqued the lack of female representation in films by this franchise, adding that when they do showcase female characters, they are extremely unrealistic, overly sexualized characters created from the perspective of the male gaze to cater to a male audience. This has only changed until recently, with characters like Wanda Maximoff, Kamala Khan, Sylvie, and Mary Jane Watson.
The behind-the-scenes information of why this happened has recently been touched upon in the book, MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios. In these, a lot of interesting information has been reiterated, including the mentioning of three of the most disappointing female-led superhero movies from the entirety of the genre.
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Marvel Wasn’t Interested In Catering To A Female Audience
In MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, this topic in particular was touched. The book talks about the fact that the Creative Committee had no interest in catering or indulging in any sort of change and unfortunately this month they not paying much attention to catering to their female audience. What made this worse was they trying to gain a female audience. Ike Perlmutter believed that putting their retention towards selling products, and toys female superheroes would not sell, and he reinforced this by not making them available for sale. If they were available, the manufacturing of these products was done in lower quantities.
To make the priorities all the more clear, Disney acquired Marvel Studios with the sole intention of wanting to sell to boys and men. As they already had a vast female audience with their other projects, they weren’t all interested in trying to push Marvel to get more female viewers. Perlmutter’s thoughts on the matter were made especially clear after an email was sent to Sony’s executive, Michael Lynton. In this email he cited three female lead films in particular, providing links for their grosses.
In this email, which was sent on August 8, 2014, he stated that the first example of why female superhero films won’t work was Elektra, which he said was a very bad idea and had a very bad result. He done mentioned Catwoman, which was called a disaster, adding another DC film to this list, he stated that Supergirl was another disaster.
Kevin Feige Changed That
Seven days before this email was sent, Kevin Feige, the now President of Marvel Studios, was asked when Marvel would be making a female lead film. to this question, he stated that he strongly believes that these types of films should be made. He then indirectly mentioned the reservations held by many in the studio, stating that he does not think it fair for people to say female superhero movies do not work.
He stated as reason for this, adding that the reason why he did not think it was fair was because after saying the statement, there would usually be fewer films that were notoriously bad, not because they had female leads, but because they were simply bad movies. He added that there were many excellent examples of films that gained immense popularity that featured female protagonists. Though he did not exclusively mention Ike Perlmutter and his comments, many assume that he was who Feige was talking about.
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