Charlie’s Angels is grabbing a lot of headlines lately, but for the wrong reasons. The reboot of the classic 1970s feminist action series arrived in cinemas this month and opened to a particularly dismal first weekend at the box office. Since then, director Elizabeth Banks has had to front a lot of questions about the various factors that could have caused it to fail. And in her latest response, the actress and filmmaker might have landed on the big one: marketing.
While speaking to The Mail Online at the UK premiere, Banks was asked about why the film has flopped in the US. She first made clear that there are a lot of fans amongst those who’ve watched it, but she thinks the “problem” for larger audiences may have been that, as Banks puts it, “no one knew it was out.”
“First of all, everyone that sees the movie loves the movie. I think that we had a problem with just, like, no one knew it was out.”
In previous interviews, Banks has hit back at the sexism of cinemagoers as a potential cause for its poor turnout, even arguing that movies such as Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman – which, like Charlie’s Angels, had women in the lead and behind the camera – only succeeded because they were part of a “male genre.” A lot of folks hit back at this assessment, with many pointing out that they simply didn’t know the film was even out yet.
Unfortunately, Sony really dropped the ball in publicizing this one, perhaps expecting the familiarity of the brand name to do the work for them. They really should’ve learned their lesson from the recent disappointing performance of Men in Black: International, which also suffered from a lack of a big marketing push.
In any case, Banks, who directed, produced, co-wrote and starred in the movie, has also taken to social media to say she’s still “proud” of what she accomplished with Charlie’s Angels, even if it’s far from the franchise re-launcher that all involved hoped it would be.