Female leads in major motion picture -- what's your thoughts?

C

camarade

Active member
Is it a proven fact that movies with female leads always makes less money?

I've been working on a fantasy trilogy for a few years now and a few days ago, it just occured to me that the screenplays has a lot of strong female characters in it. Suddenly, I'm considering re-writing the Protagonist completely into a male lead.

I guess it's a complex thing... right down from the audience to the actual producers themselves. There are some powerful women in the industry, but do they ever read scripts -- and if they do, wouldn't they still pick the male lead script since they know it makes more money for them...? :)
 
It may be true on average, but certainly not always. I don't think the gender of your protagonist will affect your script's saleability at all - it will either be irrelevant to the story, or will make the protagonist's relationships more or less interesting/original/humorous/whatever, especially if gender politics are a theme.

Remember too that producers give 'sex changes' to roles all the time, e.g. the lead character in Salt was originally male.

Which gender makes your character and the plot better? That's the only issue you should be thinking about.
 
camarade said:
Is it a proven fact that movies with female leads always makes less money?

I've been working on a fantasy trilogy for a few years now and a few days ago, it just occured to me that the screenplays has a lot of strong female characters in it. Suddenly, I'm considering re-writing the Protagonist completely into a male lead.

I guess it's a complex thing... right down from the audience to the actual producers themselves. There are some powerful women in the industry, but do they ever read scripts -- and if they do, wouldn't they still pick the male lead script since they know it makes more money for them...? :)
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Here's my advice as a total industry outsider... don't make such a change. If you write for 'what sells' you will probably be the most frustrated person... ok one in the millions of frustrated people who have 'written for what sells', and found that their material doesn't even get an an interest of an agent... in Bugtussel... let alone Hollywood...

Which leads to... you have a higher likelihood of winning the Lagos Sweepstakes Lottery, than you do selling anything to anyone in Hollywood.

Therefor keep your material as you envision it... and... collect a group around you to Make Your Movie...
 
Or turn your story into a series if novels that become wildly popular so a studio buys the rights for them, and you can secure first-dibs on writing the scripts.

You probably have as much of a chance of success following that route as you do selling a spec trilogy to a studio.

I agree with the previous post-- make the films yourself if you want to see them on a screen.
 
Mitch Gross said:
Tell that to the producers of the "Alien" franchise.
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That would probably be Walter Hill, who, along with David Giler, is credited with the female "Ripley" character... and the android twist...

But the Alien series is sort of singular in a number of ways... Ripley as played by Sigourney Weaver is never a 'sex bomb', and in the later installments takes on an almost Spokian like 'unfeeling' style.

But I do think the number of female lead 'action' films that have been wildly successful is very short...
 
camarade said:
Is it a proven fact that movies with female leads always makes less money?
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Yes, if foreign. The foreign market almost always prefers a strong male lead. But if the female lead is a name actor, well known (think Kate Beckinsale, Angelina Jolie, etc) the domestic USA sales will probably be good and foreign distribution will be okay to good. But, if you are thinking of say producing a film from your own script and pre-selling to foreign territories to fund your production (e.g. using a combination of foreign territory pre-sales, state tax incentives, gap financing), or selling a microbudget indie film after it is made-- the foreign sales agents will much prefer a male protagonist over female (I say this from spending a couple of months on filmspecific.com, learning about the $1M blueprint method often used for funding films, and from contacting a few foreign sales agents to see if what i learned on filmspecific.com had merit).

That said, I write horror stories with female protagonists, and I think it is somewhat more acceptable to have female protags in horror, but still, male is always better if it can be done. I just can not motivate myself to write with male protags yet, not sure why. But we see female protags in horror lots (Grudge, Ring, Texax Chainsaw, etc); but lots of horror with male protags too.
 
I'm pretty sure the Ripley part was written as a man, and then just cast as a woman without changing the screenplay.
 
vincent6805 said:
Think Ridley Scott -- Alien. STORY STORY STORY!
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While Ridley Scott did express great enthusiasm for a female 'lead', the original script, by Dan O'Bannon, did not include a female lead... that along with the addition of the Android character was a change written by the writers Walter Hill and David Giler.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
While Ridley Scott did express great enthusiasm for a female 'lead', the original script, by Dan O'Bannon, did not include a female lead... that along with the addition of the Android character was a change written by the writers Walter Hill and David Giler.
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One can also look at the 1958 movie that reads suspiciously similar to Alien...

IT! The Terror From Beyond Space
One by one, the crew members of a spacecraft returning to Earth from Mars are dying at the hands of a mysterious -- and seemingly indestructible -- parasitic beast stowed away on the ship. Marshall Thompson and Dabbs Greer co-star in director Edward L. Cahn's suspenseful, sci-fi classic, which features a script penned by Jerome Bixby.


it-terror-from-beyond-space-one-sheet-1958.jpg
 
The biggest problem isn't going to be the female lead - it's the trilogy aspect. Scripts sell one at a time.

I've written a bunch of screenplays with female leads and still own all of them, but the stories work much better with female leads than with male leads.

- Bill
 
I wrote a feature two years ago that had a female protagonist. I ended up getting that film financed (my first feature and I'm in post now). I didn't get a TON of money, but hey, I got outside investment to shoot the film I wanted to.

That said, if I was intent on actually selling that script to someone else or getting a LARGE investment I might have leaned towards making the protagonist a male. I'm somewhat disheartened to say this, but as an unknown writer I ask myself are my creative choices worth limiting my options. For me the answer is yes when it's something SO original I couldn't possibly imagine doing it any other way. Just my two cents.
 
OP here, I'd like to share some more details. (Sorry for the lack of grammar, english isn't my first language, will try explaining).

My script is having a teenage girl as the protagonist. However, the first character to be introduced and "connected" to the audience is a Man. I don't know what you call this type of character... but he is sort of the "torch bearer" both emotionally for the girl, and as in him leading the story forward... A sort of 'anchor point' in regards of the audience understanding what's going on in a fantasy world, wich in itself is a bit of a mess, no matter how you do it. He's more important for the audience, than for the story as such.

In the second- and third film, the girl is more of a defined protagonist. The first film is really about introducing the characters & the world around them, and what's going on. A bit like in Fellowship of the Ring, as in Frodo isn't really the most interesting character going on the screen... Personally, I'm not actually a big fan of fantasy movies, I'm trying to narrow down both the amount of characters and keeping it down-to-earth.

Hope the above makes sense, in lack of better words. Thanks for all the advice.
 
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dude your analyzing this from the waaayyyyy wrong angle. Your goal should simply be to write the best script possible (which is your best bet for someone buying it). Answer this question for yourself from the viewpoint of CRAFT and CHARACTER and CONFLICT. Just ask yourself does the protag in your story HAVE TO BE a man or HAVE TO BE a woman (or which is better for your story). Juno- has to be a girl. if your story is either/or, then obviously, you make it a man, since, like, YOURE a man Im guessing, and can identify and write for him a touch better. Better yet its best that you write a story where theres a reason its a man/woman, even a small reason.

sure there are cases where you can switch the gender of a character and have basically the same story but those are clearly EXCEPTIONS.

Ripley was written as a man and played by a woman, but thats an INTENTIONAL move to subvert genre expectations and create a strong female hero. Sarah Conner is a female for obvious reasons, too, besides wanting to make a strong female. Ladies have babies. Gender shoud come from the character and plot and be an organic, integrated part of the story, not grafted on.

example, horror movies often have female protagonists cause typically in our society they are physically weaker than men and its more believable and frightening and we show more concern for them (yeah I know, groan- quick note- one man in te dark knight shooting was shot because he was protecting not HIS WIFE, but HELPING HIS BUDDY BLOCK THE BUDDY'S WIFE. Thats how deep and primal these things go).

stop looking at gender like its a big flippant "anyway goes" to your script.

you get where Im going
 
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nycineaste said:
I think Planet Of The Vampires is also another Alien inspiration. Mario Bava, oh yeaahhhh awesome....
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...Kind of scary when you consider that the time span between the making of these two movies ( Planet of the Vampire and Alien ) is only 14 years.
 
Scripts still sell one at a time, and unless you plan on making this yourself - you have no idea who will write the sequels. Probably not you. Let's look at ALIEN since someone brought it up:

ALIEN - original screenplay by Dan O'Bannon and Ronny Shusett.
ALIENS - screenplay by James Cameron (story by Cameron and Giler & Hill).
ALIEN3 - screenplay by Giler & Hill and Larry Ferguson, based on a screenplay by Vincent Ward.
ALIEN RESURRECTION - screenplay by Joss Whedon (though the script is very different than the movie).

Okay - each movie in the series was written by a new writer. That's how it works 99% of the time. But even in the 1% where the same writer is hired to write the sequels, that writer is an employee of the producer and basically pitches sequel ideas until one is decided upon. The writer may have *their* idea of what happens next, but that doesn't matter. Often once a film is made it takes on a life of its own, and what the writer thinks is the story no longer applies.

So I would focus on writing *one* single great screenplay that tells a story with a beginning and middle and end - the Death Star blows up and it's over. If that film is a huge hit (very few are) then they may make a sequel... and most probably someone else will write it and you will have nothing to do with it.

- Bill
 
wcmartell said:
So I would focus on writing *one* single great screenplay that tells a story with a beginning and middle and end - the Death Star blows up and it's over. If that film is a huge hit (very few are) then they may make a sequel... and most probably someone else will write it and you will have nothing to do with it.

- Bill
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There have been a couple of aborted attempts to create a franchise recently of book series... I would have liked to have seen the series continue for "The Golden Compass"(2007), and "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant"(2009)... I hear they are beginning filming the second "Hunger Games" book, "Catching Fire" in November... So, hopefully I get to see all three books in film.
 
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