While most Americans (and the world) are struggling financially, Hollywood had a great year. Box office revenue topped $10.6 billion, up 10 percent from 2008 (according to Hollywood.com) and many of the year end stories have talked about women both at the box office and as directors.
Here what IndieWIRE had to say:
This was truly a landmark year for women and film. Female-centered options dominated the indie landscape, with “Precious,” the year’s top grossing specialty release, leading the way. The film may have been directed by a man, but it featured an almost entirely female cast and most certainly raked in its box office due in large part to female audiences hungry for options. And beyond “Precious,” there were surprisingly many. Christine Jeffs’ “Sunshine Cleaning,” Lone Scherfig’s “An Education,” Jane Campion’s “Bright Star,” Anne Fontaine’s “Coco Before Chanel,” Claire Denis’s “35 Shots of Rum,” Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” Cédric Klapisch’s “Paris,” Sebastian Silva’s “The Maid,” Cherien Dabis’s “Amreeka”… It’s an incredibly long list of often fantastic cinema.
And on top of all of it, these movies are making money. Of the top ten grossing limited released narrative films of 2009, four were directed by women (“Hurt Locker,” “Sunshine Cleaning,” “Coco Before Chanel,” and “An Education”), and three more (”(500) Days of Summer,” “Precious” and “Away We Go”) were most certainly aimed at female audiences, and feature either a female co-lead (“Summer” and “Away”) or a nearly all female cast (“Precious”).
And don’t forget the earlier pieces from the Wrap: Look Who’s Winning the B.O Battle of the Sexes and CNN.com: Yes, Hollywood, Women Do Go to the Movies
So 2009 had a confluence of good movies that were directed by women that made money and movies about women that people wanted to see.
So 2010 should be a year to build on these successes. Here’s the problem. All the women who make movies at the studios released movies last year. It’s not a big list to begin with. It includes Anne Fletcher, Nora Ephron, Betty Thomas and Nancy Meyers (am I missing anyone?) All those women were in action last year and none of them (except maybe Fletcher) releases a movie each year. On the indie from we also had films from other high profile women like Jane Campion, Mira Nair, Karyn Kusama, Sally Potter, and of course Kathryn Bigelow.
The question is how to we keep building on the success of 2009 when they won’t be any big movies directed by women? There will be some strong women centric films like Sex and the City 2, the third Twilight installment as well as films from Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, Katherine Heigl and an action pic from Angelina Jolie.
But those are movies directed by guys about women. We need those and several of them will be great, but we also need to see movies by women about women (and also about guys and other things.)
From what I can tell there are only a couple of women with films already scheduled for release in 2010 and they are all indies. We will have films like Please Give from Nicole Holofcener, Toe to Toe from Emily Abt, Fish Tank from Andrea Arnold (January 15), Last Night from Massy Tadjedin (March 19), The Runaways, from Floria Sigismondi (March 19). Other women with completed films but without a release date include Julie Taymor ‘s The Tempest, Niki Caro’s The Vinter’s Luck, Jodie Foster’s The Beaver and Sophia Copolla’s Somewhere.
There are a bunch more films that will roll out starting at Sundance including Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right and Gurinider Chadha’s It’s a Wonderful Afterlife.
So the thing we all need to wrap around our heads early this year is that most all the women directed flicks will have smaller releases so we will all need to be vigilant and get our asses out to the theatres.
I don’t want to give the powers that be (whoever the fuck they are) any ammunition to say that 2009 was a fluke either from a box office or a behind the scenes perspective.
Is anyone else concerned about this? Are there other movies coming out that I don’t know about? Please share.
Box Office 2.0: The Biggest Stories of the 2009 Indie Box Office (IndieWire)
Look Who’s Winning the B.O. Battle of the Sexes (The Wrap)
Yes, Hollywood, women do go to movies (CNN.com)
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m concerned that the 2009 B.O sucess for female stars and female-focused films might just be a trend and not the start of something new and revolutionary for women in Hollywood. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong.
Dear DIMA, Your hope will be realized & you’ll be proved wrong IF you do just as Melssa says: “So the thing we all need to wrap around our heads early this year is that most all the women directed flicks will have smaller releases so we will all need to be vigilant and get our asses out to the theatres.”
WE all “need to be vigilant” & WE all need to “get our asses out to the theatres.” Yes, Melissa: If WE continue to use our POWER OF THE PURSE, then we will succeed!!!
The major critics groups have all spoken now & come March, it is highly likely that Kathryn Bigelow will break thru the Oscar barrier–another one of those infamous “cracks in the glass ceiling” that Hilary Clinton spoke about last summer.
So let’s all keep the pressure up & soon victory will b ours :-)
JLH – seconded, or indeed, third-ed..!
What an encouraging article, and great advice – cinema will not change without female filmmakers and female audiences putting in the cash & hard work to make women-led films an even greater success in 2010!
I’m not sure how this is going to turn out, but Wonderwoman should be going into production at some point – there were rumours about Megan Gale starring, and then some much bigger rumours about Megan Fox, then some other rumours about it having been caned, but it remains ‘in development’ on imdb, there was a lot of talk about it at Comic-Con this year in Gail Simone’s questiontime (Gail pens the storylines at DC Comics), and as of november 2009, it is (according to imdbpro) at script stage… looks like now it won’t be out until 2011, but we shall see…
Love your blog.
I just wanted to pointed out that three of the women mentioned, Jane Campion, Christine Jeffs and Nicki Caro are from New Zealand. Isn’t that amazing considering the country is so small? NZ was the first country to give women the vote (I think it was in 1894), so there’s definitely something in the water there.
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