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- Holly, you're interested in pop culture
and how media is made, right?
- Yep.
- We should totally do a Brain Stuff episode
that's specifically about how entertainment works.
- Great.
- Let's do one about that movie "Lucy."
Have you seen it yet?
- I haven't, but you're talking about the
Luc Besson film starring Scarlet Johansson
where she's a drug mule and she gets super powers
because the drugs in her stomach leak
and they let her use more than 10% of her brain, right?
- Yeah, it's like the female version of
that "Limitless" movie with Bradley Cooper.
(laughs) Ignoring the whole brain
10% thing, that's a whole other episode
for a different time, it looks pretty cool, right?
- She's really a pretty good action star usually,
our Scar Jo, so maybe if this one works out
we will finally get that standalone
"Black Widow" movie that's been rumored.
- Well, not so fast there, Holly.
You know about the whole exclusion myth in Hollywood, right?
That action movies with female leads don't sell well,
which is why so few of them are made.
- Yeah, but women account for half
of all movie ticket purchases,
so doesn't the film industry want to make money?
- Let's take a minute and look at the claims
that female-led action movies don't sell,
and then a couple studies that analyze those numbers
to see if it's actually true or not.
- I have read that screenwriters are actually coached
not to write female characters that have complex roles.
- How about Joss Whedon?
You like the movies he makes, right?
- I super do.
- He tried to get a Wonder Woman movie made,
but it didn't work out, and in 2013 he said
it was because executives used bad movies
with super heroines that already failed as justification,
especially if they don't sell enough toy merchandise.
- Okay, an economic argument like that
I can buy into it, especially when you consider
Hollywood's current emphasis on the international market.
Before they even start making a movie,
producers are selling distribution rights
to international buyers, and those producers
are really vocal in saying that they have
a better chance to sell those rights
if the movies are led by popular male actors
that already are known around the world.
- Yeah, like a guy like me.
- No.
- That's why it wasn't that big of a surprise
when it was reported in 2007
that then Warner Brothers chairman,
Jeff Robinov, decided his studio would no longer
make movies with female leads.
- But Robinov denied that he ever said such a thing,
and he's not even with Warner Brothers anymore, Christian,
so you can't use that as your example.
And what about the success of female-led films
that already happens all the time?
Have you seen "Kill Bill?"
And, hello, what about the entire Aliens franchise
featuring Sigourney Weaver?
- Yes, but some industry insiders will claim
that those movies were flukes, and they'll often attribute
the success to the big name directors,
like Quentin Tarantino or James Cameron.
- Okay, fine.
You're gonna make me go to the
nuclear option of evidence here.
"The Hunger Games," led by a woman, made buckets of money.
- The first one made 408 million dollars.
"Catching Fire" made 425 million dollars
and was the number one movie in 2013.
"Hunger Games" has a lead character that is female,
multi-faceted, and isn't sexualized.
There's a lot of hope that that franchise
is gonna change the way that Hollywood thinks about gender.
I mean, who knows?
Maybe that's how "Lucy" got greenlit.
- Maybe, but it would explain the popularity
of the film "Divergent," which has been really big
this year, and it's got a similar dystopia
girl archetype thing going on that "The Hunger Games" has.
Did you know that that's actually
the second most popular movie this year
that stars a female lead?
- Yeah, that's true, but as of this recording,
it's only the 10th in box office sales.
- Okay, smug ginger, why don't you just
go ahead and school me with all the statistics
about how women-led action films
actually perform at the box office?
- Okay, okay.
So, after "Catching Fire" did so well,
the New York Film Academy examined
the top 500 grossing films produced
in the last five years for gender inequality.
They found that only 10% of movies feature
an equal number of women on screen to men.
They also revealed that only 31% of speaking roles
in those films go to women, and check this out.
Of that subset of speaking roles,
a third of them had to take their clothes off at some point.
- But that doesn't actually address
female leads specifically.
- Another study out of San Diego State University
found that in 2013 only 15% of film protagonists were women.
That's actually up four points from 2011, Holly.
- So, regardless of why, those movie producers
are actually right that female leads
don't sell tickets as well as men then.
- Well, actually, polling website FiveThirtyEight
did this interesting analysis that tests that claim.
They found that movies featuring multiple
female characters who talk about something other than men
have significantly higher box office sales,
even though they have lower median budgets
than these other films, they actually deliver
an average return of $2.68 on every dollar.
- Well, then the free market's gonna prevail, right?
I mean, if Hollywood wants to make money,
that data that you just talked about
means we should start seeing more movies featuring
these kinds of three dimensional female characters.
- We'll see.
As we're speaking, the number four movie this year
was "Maleficent," which I know you have a soft spot for.
- I (bleep) hate that film.
- So, what about you, Brain Stuff fans?
What's your favorite female-led action film?
- Yeah, and if you could make one, what would it be?
Tell us in the YouTube comments.
- This episode was a bit of an experiment for us
talking about how entertainment works.
Did you like it?
Do you want us to tackle more questions like this?
Subscribe to the channel, and tell us your thoughts.