How Many Women Have You Done During the Last Seven Years? Insights from the Human-Directed Barbie Movie, Ladybird, Titanic and Alice in Wonderland
It would be great if the number of women nominated for Oscars for best director improved with Barbie. It’s a sad number. Only seven. In 2024, those numbers might not even improve. Barbie director Greta Gerwig has already been nominated for an Oscar, for her 2017 movie Ladybird.
Smith has been studying inclusion in popular culture for a long time. Her most recent report, from February, shows that female representation in television and film has steadily improved. She looks at the top 1,600 movies in a year. In 2007, the percentage of female protagonists was only 20%. The number went up to 42% in 2022, the year before. Not perfect. The numbers for the most successful films in the world are very low.
The Town’s host, Matthew Belloni, pointed out that on Barbie’s opening weekend, women made up 69% of ticket buyers domestically. “And then it actually rose to 71% female in the second weekend, which is unusual,” he said. Anecdotally, it seems numerous women return to the movie, bringing relatives and friends. Barbie’s appeal to men cannot be denied.
The Hollywood Reporter’s senior film editor, Rebecca Keegan, pointed out on a recent episode that this is a reflection of what Hollywood has chosen to back with its biggest budgets, largest marketing spend, and who it has. It’s not easy to say that that is a reflection of the culture that has driven Hollywood for decades.
Nine, that is, if you count female fish. Finding Dory (2016) swims in the billion dollar club, along with the animated princesses of Frozen (2013), Frozen II (2019) and Beauty and the Beast (2017). Women were a part of the movie, as evidenced by the billion-dollar Star Wars film. The Last Jedi (2017) and Captain Marvel (2019). Then, two other billion dollar one-offs: Titanic (1997) and a live-action Alice in Wonderland (2010).
The female-directed movie Barbie opened at the box office on July 21st in the US, dethroning the female directed movie Captain Marvel which opened on the same day with $153 million. Alongside Oppenheimer, the Christopher Nolan biopic that released the same day, the two movies contributed to the fourth-biggest box office weekend in US history and, as The AV Club notes, the largest that didn’t contain an Avengers or Star Wars movie.
We can expect more from them. The toy maker will be keen to dig out additional Barbie-sized successes from its catalog. Prior to the release of Barbie, The New Yorker reported that the toy company is considering adapting everything from Hot Wheels to Uno.
“‘Barbie’ is not only an incredibly special film, but is clearly the theatrical event of the summer if not the year, Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. Pictures president of domestic said.”