Movies bomb at the box office all the time, that’s just how the business works. Not every film gets to be a success regardless of how good it is, and there are just as many commercial duds as there are smash hits. The most recent big-screen interpretation of Charlie’s Angels became the latest project to discover this over the weekend after it opened to just over $8 million domestically, but director Elizabeth Banks hasn’t exactly been shy in voicing her opinions on why the reboot tanked.
Almost as soon as Charlie’s Angels hit theaters, Banks was on the defensive about the lack of female-driven action franchises, claiming audiences were more than happy to lap up 37 Spider-Man movies instead. Then, the actress/director/producer/writer went on an astonishing rant where she blamed men for the movie’s box office failure, claiming that they weren’t interested and willing to part with their money to watch genre flicks with female leads.
Banks faced huge backlash for her comments, especially when she brushed over the massive success of Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel by claiming that the reason they were such big hits is because they were part of a supposed ‘male genre,’ while also seemingly forgetting that she co-starred in The Hunger Games, a female-led action-orientated series that earned almost $3 billion worldwide.
When asked at the UK premiere of Charlie’s Angels if she hoped the movie would fare better overseas, Banks was once again forced to defend her work, this time casting blame on the marketing campaign.
“First of all, everyone that sees the movie loves the movie. I think we had a problem with just, like, no-one knew it was out.”
The first problem with this statement is that based on the box office numbers, not a lot of people bothered going to see the movie at all. The second is that reviews have been mixed at best, with Charlie’s Angels currently sitting at an average 56% on Rotten Tomatoes, although the audience score is much higher at 80%. Perhaps the problem is just that audiences, regardless of gender, simply didn’t care much about the latest adaptation of a frothy TV show that originally debuted in 1976.