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The Myth that Studios Don't Support Female-Led Action Movies Has to Die

April 29, 2017

There's some discussion about whether or not Wonder Woman—one of my most-anticipated movies of the year!—is being advertised "enough." I'll be honest, I haven't noticed a ton of ads for it either, so I was kind of nodding along to this piece asking why the promotional pace was a bit slow. However, The Wrap suggests that WB's spending on Wonder Woman is currently outstripping its spending on Suicide Squad and that things won't ramp up in full until Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2's debut is off the board.

That makes sense! However, there's a line from The Wrap's piece that caused my eyebrows to arch a bit:

Hollywood does indeed have a poor track record of fully supporting female-led action films, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here.

At first I thought "Wow, that's insipid nonsense that is tacked on to any piece on this subject because it is The Correct And Accepted View!" But then I started thinking about it and I realized that, you know what, there really aren't that many action movies that get huge advertising pushes and star women.

Movie studios just really don't want to get behind women-led action movies.

Obviously the problem here is rank sexism.

Hollywood is just leaving money on the table by not flooding the airwaves with images of women in action movies.

Where are the franchises?

Hollywood, land of the mediocre white man, would definitely back an awful, garbage series in a way it would never do for women.

This problem of underselling women action stars goes back years.

Decades, really.

I just wonder if things will ever get better.

Don't movie studios know that women can do action now too?

Maybe one day Hollywood will get over its poor track record of promoting women-led action movies.

Until then I guess I'll just have to watch one of the three trailers for Wonder Woman: