If you’ve been reading us long enough, you should be familiar with the fact that Hollywood considers an action movie with a female lead to be hobbled by the gender of its main character, doomed to do poorly at the box office because lacks the ability (somehow) to attract a male viewership. Movies with female leads are considered to be at such a disadvantage that they can be incredibly difficult to get greenlit, making it even more difficult find examples that disprove this widely accepted rule. Before this weekend, Brave was expected to open at $65 million if it was lucky, despite the fact that the last twelve Pixar movies have opened at the top of the box office.
The numbers are in, and Brave netted nearly $68 million this weekend, beating the pants off of every other movie in the top ten by a factor of at least three. But that’s not all.
Brave‘s audience was only slightly skewed female, with 43% of those attending being male. It has preserved Pixar’s streak of box office topping openings. It now boasts the second-best June opening for an animated film in history, behind Toy Story 3.
While I’m far too jaded to assume that direct evidence of the success of action films with female archers will do much to change Hollywood’s practices any time soon, there is a tiny bit of me that holds out hope.
(via The Wrap.)
