Supergirl Animated Movie

[Admiral_Young]

Yep as mentioned "The Dark Knight Returns Part I" is scheduled for this fall, I think October or November...and Part II probably in January or February. I imagine "Superman: Brainiac" will be a summer release, perhaps tied-in with the release of "Man of Steel"?

[davejames]

Ian Keldon wrote:

---

WB banned any further female-lead movies a year or two ago because they were PO-d that the Wonder Woman DTDVD took too long to make its money back. They want projects that will sell the required number of units in a month or two, not 6-12 months.

Yeah I know, but one can always dream.

I do think they probably overreacted though. WW was going to be a hard sell no matter HOW good the movie was (and I think it's one of their best, personally).

Most of the public just doesn't find her to be all that cool or interesting. Other, younger female characters like Supergirl or Batgirl would probably do a lot better.

[JD]

Ian Keldon wrote:

---

WB banned any further female-lead movies a year or two ago because they were PO-d that the Wonder Woman DTDVD took too long to make its money back. They want projects that will sell the required number of units in a month or two, not 6-12 months.

It was also why there was no mention of Supergirl in the title of Apocalypse, which adapted "The Supergirl From Krypton" story arc from the Superman/Batman comic series.

[Kai "the spy"]

Ian Keldon wrote:

---

WB banned any further female-lead movies a year or two ago because they were PO-d that the Wonder Woman DTDVD took too long to make its money back. They want projects that will sell the required number of units in a month or two, not 6-12 months.

Which is a damned shame. WW is one of my favorites of the DCU Animated Movies, and would even make for a good template of a big screen movie.

Maybe it'd help if we showed the suits at WB the results of this weeks av contest?! (WW on second place, only Iron Man getting more votes).

[Christopher]

It's ridiculous to abandon all female-led movies because one did poorly. They wouldn't cancel all movies with male leads just because one did poorly. It's gross sexism.

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

It's not just movies with female leads they've abandoned. They decided not to make any animated movies other than those centred on Batman, Superman, and/or the Justice League. For now the only way another character gets an animated movie is if they get a live action movie for the animated release to slipstream on (as was the case with Green Lantern: Emerald Knights).

[Gotham Central]

Christopher wrote:

---

It's ridiculous to abandon all female-led movies because one did poorly. They wouldn't cancel all movies with male leads just because one did poorly. It's gross sexism.

Perhaps, but as a business decision it makes sense. Think about it, the audience for superhero films is overwhelmingly male. Men, in general, tend not to consume genre products with female leads and there are usually not enough female fans to pick up the slack.

A good example of this was SuckerPunch. Most of the people that loved and appreciated what was done in that movie were women. Men, by and large, hated it. This is probably why it took so long for the WW video to make back its money. Wonder Woman is the most famous female superhero in the world...and still she struggles. I doubt a Supergirl or Batgirl film would fare any better. As long as female led properties struggle to get a male audience its going to be harder to convince the studios to fund these films.

[Christopher]

Gotham Central wrote:

---

Perhaps, but as a business decision it makes sense.

No, it doesn't. The point is, how do they know that it failed because the lead was female? There could be a lot of other reasons, so automatically jumping to that conclusion is not sensible in the least. It's just assuming that the movie's failure is confirmation of their existing prejudice against female leads.

Think about it, the audience for superhero films is overwhelmingly male. Men, in general, tend not to consume genre products with female leads and there are usually not enough female fans to pick up the slack.

I don't think that makes sense at all. Why wouldn't men want to watch female leads? Speaking as a heterosexual man, I'd much rather watch women than men in just about any context. I love stories with female leads.

Not to mention that we've had plenty of successful genre products with female leads, such as the Alien franchise, the worthwhile parts of the Terminator franchise, Xena and Buffy, the Underworld and Resident Evil franchises, etc. The Legend of Korra is one of the biggest genre hits of the year, judging from how much attention and cosplay it got at Comic-Con. And those had plenty of male fans as well as female ones. So I say that party line about men not liking female leads is a myth.

I think it's also a myth that "the audience for superhero films is overwhelmingly male." Comic-Con attendees this year were forty percent female. There's a huge audience of women out there who love comics and animation and want material that represents them more and better, but the industry is unwilling to give it to them because of these outdated and ignorant assumptions about the gender makeup and preferences of their audience.

[Gotham Central]

Christopher wrote:

---

No, it doesn't. The point is, how do they know that it failed because the lead was female? There could be a lot of other reasons, so automatically jumping to that conclusion is not sensible in the least. It's just assuming that the movie's failure is confirmation of their existing prejudice against female leads.

I don't think that makes sense at all. Why wouldn't men want to watch female leads? Speaking as a heterosexual man, I'd much rather watch women than men in just about any context. I love stories with female leads.

Not to mention that we've had plenty of successful genre products with female leads, such as the Alien franchise, the worthwhile parts of the Terminator franchise, Xena and Buffy, the Underworld and Resident Evil franchises, etc. The Legend of Korra is one of the biggest genre hits of the year, judging from how much attention and cosplay it got at Comic-Con. And those had plenty of male fans as well as female ones. So I say that party line about men not liking female leads is a myth.

I think it's also a myth that "the audience for superhero films is overwhelmingly male." Comic-Con attendees this year were forty percent female. There's a huge audience of women out there who love comics and animation and want material that represents them more and better, but the industry is unwilling to give it to them because of these outdated and ignorant assumptions about the gender makeup and preferences of their audience.

I'm sorry Christopher but you're wrong about this one and its a well researched phenomenon.

First of all I did not say that they had no male fans. There is a subset of the male fan base that does enjoy female led stories, but its a small portion. Its not that men don't want to women, its that they tend not to identify with them as the lead heroic character. This is a trend that has been identified across the spectrum of mass media and is well documented. You run across the same phenomenon when it comes to non-white lead characters.

Buffy is a bad example since the overwhelming majority of its fan base was female.

As for female fans at comic-con, if you look closely, most of them are not fans of the superhero genre. Comic-con features a wide array of sub genres many of which do have a stronger female fan base (vampires, anime, fantasy etc). Again, I'm not saying that there are not any female superhero fans, its just that they are usually not enough to make up for the lack of interest by male fans.

The point though is not that a females superhero film won't make money. It clearly will. The WW film did ok. The thing is that it did not do as well the counterpart Batman and Superman films did...and it took longer for it to earn that money.

[Christopher]

^Even if that's true, and I'm not at all convinced it is, it remains a vicious cycle. Superhero media will never attract more female fans until they stop consciously excluding and alienating them. I've read a number of essays and blog posts online by female comics fans who love superheroes in principle, who want to support and participate in the genre, but who feel excluded by the pervasive attitudes of the industry, the insistence on reducing female characters to oversexualized caricatures and women in refrigerators, the reluctance to give female-led titles an equal chance. There are quite a lot of female writers and artists in the industry now -- yes, including on superhero comics -- but there's still an uphill battle.

So defending the problem is just perpetuating the problem. If enough people stand up and say "This is not acceptable," then it can change. So I'm not interested in listening to your rationalizations and excuses for a practice that is simply wrong. And you shouldn't be either. You should be standing up and insisting on a change. We all should.

[Ian Keldon]

davejames wrote:

---

Yeah I know, but one can always dream.

I do think they probably overreacted though. WW was going to be a hard sell no matter HOW good the movie was (and I think it's one of their best, personally).

Preaching to the choir. The Green Lantern sequel was also messed up because of the edict, as was the Teen Titans project.

Most of the public just doesn't find her to be all that cool or interesting. Other, younger female characters like Supergirl or Batgirl would probably do a lot better.

Based on how the books go, maybe or maybe not. WB's conclusion was that female-lead projects don't "sell", which is why they selected S/B: Apocalypse as their "Supergirl" inaugural project.

[Ian Keldon]

Christopher wrote:

---

It's ridiculous to abandon all female-led movies because one did poorly. They wouldn't cancel all movies with male leads just because one did poorly. It's gross sexism.

As I noted, it also torpedoes the GL sequal and Teen Titans: The Judas Contract.

It's not sexism. It's what marketing has determined sells the most units in the shortest amount of time.

[Gotham Central]

Christopher wrote:

---

^Even if that's true, and I'm not at all convinced it is, it remains a vicious cycle. Superhero media will never attract more female fans until they stop consciously excluding and alienating them. I've read a number of essays and blog posts online by female comics fans who love superheroes in principle, who want to support and participate in the genre, but who feel excluded by the pervasive attitudes of the industry, the insistence on reducing female characters to oversexualized caricatures and women in refrigerators, the reluctance to give female-led titles an equal chance. There are quite a lot of female writers and artists in the industry now -- yes, including on superhero comics -- but there's still an uphill battle.

So defending the problem is just perpetuating the problem. If enough people stand up and say "This is not acceptable," then it can change. So I'm not interested in listening to your rationalizations and excuses for a practice that is simply wrong. And you shouldn't be either. You should be standing up and insisting on a change. We all should.

You're making a social argument and I'm talking business. Warner Brothers will support cultivating female characters as it does via DC comics, but its less willing to risk millions on a video production that history has shown makes less money than a similar concept for a male character.

I suspect that the real test of all of this is to see what happens if Marvel makes a Black Widow film. It will be interesting to see how well that does compared to Captain America: TWS, Iron Man 3 etc.

Given that WB is pushing for a JL movie, that might also serve as a catalyst for the ressurection of a WW film. But again, those female led superhero films will have to perform at levels equal to their male counterparts. If they don't expect the same blackout to happen all over again.

[Christopher]

Gotham Central wrote:

---

You're making a social argument and I'm talking business. Warner Brothers will support cultivating female characters as it does via DC comics, but its less willing to risk millions on a video production that history has shown makes less money than a similar concept for a male character.

And that's still a circular argument. As I said, there's no proof that it's specifically the gender of the lead that made the movies do badly. People are just assuming that because it fits their prejudices and expectations.

I mean, come on, how many DC Universe movies have there been with female leads? Exactly one, Wonder Woman. It is impossible to prove a pattern with only a single data point. If there were multiple movies that had nothing in common except having a female lead, and if they'd all done badly, then a legitimate statistical argument could be made that there's a correlation between the sex of the lead and the success of the movie. But that is not the case. There is one movie that performed below expectations and also had a female lead. There is no possible way to prove that there's a causative relationship between those two factors, not with only a single example. It could have done poorly because of some other factor, like its storyline. Maybe audiences weren't as interested in Greek mythology as they were in science fiction or crime stories. Maybe they were interested in Wonder Woman in principle, but didn't think the star of Felicity would be a very interesting choice in the role. And even if they had a problem with Wonder Woman specifically as a lead, that doesn't translate to having a problem with all female leads. It is simply impossible to prove that with only a single example to go on.

So to claim that the poor performance of a single female-led movie, the only one they've ever even tried, is proof that audiences don't like female leads at all is an incompetent argument at best, a grossly dishonest one at worst. It's complete and utter crap. It's not good business sense; in fact, it's completely senseless from a business standpoint because it's not based in any kind of legitimate statistics or body of evidence, but just pulling guesses and assumptions out of a hat.

I suspect that the real test of all of this is to see what happens if Marvel makes a Black Widow film. It will be interesting to see how well that does compared to Captain America: TWS, Iron Man 3 etc.

Unfortunately, Marvel Studios doesn't seem to show any interest in doing a solo Black Widow movie even though it's a no-brainer. Because they're trapped by the same preconceptions and circular reasoning as the entire industry, letting good business sense be trumped by antiquated gender assumptions.

But again, those female led superhero films will have to perform at levels equal to their male counterparts. If they don't expect the same blackout to happen all over again.

Which is still not good business, not if you don't have enough examples to prove the lead characters' gender actually is the reason for their different performance. And if studios pull the plug the moment a single female-led film bombs, that means we'll never get enough examples to test that hypothesis in any statistically valid way. And it will just remain a self-reinforcing prejudice that could be hurting the studios' business because they're pre-emptively alienating an audience that could embrace the studios' output if the studios wouldn't keep giving up on them so hastily.

[Ian Keldon]

^You have to remember, Christopher, that the marketing people for these animated projects ALSO look at the sales performance of the comics themselves as guides. Female-lead comics aren't selling, for whatever reason.