My latest piece from Forbes:
The big news last week was rightfully the passage of a towering figure in history, Nelson Mandela. So it’s not surprising that most people — including me — missed an editorial in Friday’s NY Times, Heroines at the Box Office. This type of piece is pretty out of character for most big newspapers (outside of LA), and especially for the NY Times, which has never been one to champion the cause of more women onscreen, especially in its editorial pages. But if the NY Times — which one friend noted is usually late on the curve on these issues — gets on the bandwagon, encouraging Hollywood to finally get over their continuing dismissal of successful female-centric movies at the box office, this is a clear indication that this conversation has jumped to another level.
The NY Times writes:
The success of “Catching Fire” and “Frozen” should put to rest the assumption that audiences don’t want to see female-centric movies, especially female-led action-adventure stories, an assumption that is often trotted out as a defense of gender imbalance on the screen.
It is the confluence of these two movies and their massive box office numbers that have enabled this conversation to happen.
