Superheroines Kick Butt to Rescue Hollywood

Author: John Harlow, The Sunday Times

Hollywood is calling on female action heroes to win audiences back to the cinema. Ticket sales are down a record 18% this summer, and studios admit the picture would be far grimmer but for swashbuckling heroines such as Scarlett Johansson, Shailene Woodley and Zoe Saldana.

Their films have sold more tickets than predicted, reflecting a social change: young men now are happy to pay for films where attractive young women “kick butt”, say analysts, something regarded as a Hollywood taboo in previous generations.

Johansson, 29, topped the US box office last month when the action thriller Lucy opened with her in the title role as a smuggler who gains supernatural powers after a bag of “brain drugs” explodes in her stomach. The film opens in Britain next week.

Women also flocked in record numbers to the superhero romp Guardians of the Galaxy because Disney highlighted its lead actress Saldana — who is painted green rather than her familiar Avatar blue — and positioned it as a comedy. Women buy 60% of tickets for comedies, which are cheaper to produce than computer-generated fantasies.

Superheroines are reaching critical mass, though: Sony and Warner Bros have announced a stream of comic-book adaptations that will be headlined by young women, including Wonder Woman and “Spider-Woman”.

Joss Whedon, who created television’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the role model for today’s superheroines, has complained that five years ago Hollywood blocked his plans for Wonder Woman because they did not believe men would watch it.

Times are changing: Johansson, who made her name in period pieces such as Girl with a Pearl Earring, is the highest-paid actress in the world. She will earn $20m (£12m) to return next summer as the catsuited assassin Black Widow in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Whedon’s sequel to Avengers Assemble.

Jennifer Lawrence, 23, shook up old thinking as the bow-wielding Katniss Everdeen in the fantasy series The Hunger Games, while Woodley, 22, has shown she can do more than top the summer box office as a fierce heroine battling Kate Winslet’s character in Divergent, a science fiction thriller.

She has also helped rekindle the weepie genre: The Fault in Our Stars — in which she plays a terminally ill cancer patient — attracted record numbers of young women to the cinema.

Few critics said it was a great film, but it cost $12m to make and has earned $270m, making it possibly the most profitable movie of this year.

The weepie theme will continue with If I Stay, where a beautiful teenager hovers between life, death and her hunky boyfriend after a car crash. She is played by Chloë Grace Moritz, 17, who cut her teeth as a foul-mouthed vigilante in Kick-Ass.

Women take 15% of lead roles in Hollywood, the same as in the 1940s. But a Forbes magazine analysis says they make more money for the studios than A-list stars because they are paid up to 30% less.

“This summer it’s all about the women,” said Paul Dergarabedian of the box office analyst Rentrak. “Maleficent, The Fault in Our Stars, Tammy [a comedy with Melissa McCarthy] and Lucy are all led by female protagonists and are defying expectations.”

Original article published here : http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/world_news/Americas/article1444793.ece?shareToken=63d677124ed7f1dd7bcae6af8f5b600a