Warner Bros Honcho Decrees: No More Films With Female Leads

Deadline Hollywood Daily:

This comes to me from three different producers, so I know it's real: Warner Bros president of production Jeff Robinov has made a new decree that "We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead". This Neanderthal thinking comes after both Jodie Foster's The Brave One (even though she's had big recent hits with Flightplan and Panic Room) and Nicole Kidman's The Invasion (as if three different directors didn't have something to do with the awfulness of the gross receipts) under-performed at the box office recently. "Can you imagine when Gloria Allred gets hold of this? It's going to be like World War III," one producer just told me. (I put in a call to Glo, who comments below.)

Read the whole story: Deadline Hollywood Daily

Comments

[TJTelecaster]

What an idiot..!

What about plot..and story line..these guys real suck dead bear balls..

[Steamboater]

Its' the writers of films that do poorly who Robinov should blame plus his own acceptance of the scripts. I wouldn't be surprised if the writers are predominately maele too. If only that stalwart of Warners--Bette Davis--was alive; she'd give'm hell.

[barrycourage]

Sherry Lansing retired as head of Paramount a couple years ago, but I bet she still has some pull.

I would be surprised if any studio where she worked--MGM, Columbia, Paramount--would follow WB's lead.

Maybe the studio is adopting a bit of the attitude of one of its founders, Jack Warner:

"While touring the talk show circuit to promote What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Bette Davis told one interviewer that when she and Joan Crawford were first suggested for the leads, Warner studio head Jack L. Warner replied: 'I wouldn't give a plugged nickel for either of those two old broads.'"

That film got five Oscar nominations (including one for Davis) and won one for costume design. It also garnered 10 nominations and two wins from other film organizations.

The film cost $980,000.00 to make and grossed $9 million. And this was in 1962.

WB is obviously shooting itself in the foot.

[Alvin4NY]

Joan Crawford always had a snide, playful side to her. She once said of Jack Warner that his table manners were so bad he might as well use a trough. Money will buy you the biggest estate in Hollywood, but it can't give you class.

[thegirlnextdoor]

He sounds like a desperate loser to me.

[Trittydi]

Really - listen to his piteous bleating - "women are to blame! Must punish the women!" What a pathetic excuse for a MAN.
*

[Defyant]

Blame the women, same shit, different day.

[David423]

That's as idiotic as MGM's decree that their film scores should contain "no minor chords."

Andre Previn wrote a book with that title and he was describing his early years and the view of one MGM exective who heard some music in a minor key and thought it was scary.
Upon leaving MGM, Previn tried to take the message down from the bulletin board as a souvenir.

[dyspeptic]

Going to a theater to see a movie is such an unpleasant experience, I can't imagine them making anything that would lure me there. Time for women to form their own studios or whatever it takes and start bypassing the old boy system. The whole thing is like a horsedrawn carriage industry at this point, anyhow. Why would women want to top that steaming heap?

[NotaBeliever]

So the old white guy thinks he's making a business decision. The world is full of old white guys making bad decisions on every level. So let Warner Brothers lose out on a few moneymaker flicks with female leads and he'll change his mind ... or Warner Brothers will show him the door ... or whatever happens to failed executives in Hollywood. [shrug]

[nellre]

Ok, I will, from this day forward, buy only DVDs with female leads if the film was made by WB.

[groucho]

Both Nicole and Jodie are beautiful and talented, BUT, maybe the problem is the amount of women (and men) who are in movies for their looks, rather than acting. Bette Davis wasn't afraid of looking plain in her movies, it was considered ACTING.
But the truth still is like Warren Beatty said in Bullworth, they spend a lot of money, but they really don't make very good movies.

[Steamboater]

Beautiful women have always been featured in movies and excellent ones at that. It's the scripts for the last several years, shoot'm-up, slam bang action films that are geared to teens that bust out. Hollywood has to be embarrassed into making a decent film by foreign film studios that often put out better product. The great directors are dead too unfortunately e.g., there's no David Lean around to make films like "A Passage To India" or "Lawrence Of Arabia" any more. Audiences who do go to the movies don't want to think. They want blood.

[Alvin4NY]

...and don't forget Will Ferrel and Ben Stiller. These two are making billions for the studios, with one lame "comedy" after another. The movie with Will where he plays the race car driver was one of the worst I have ever seen, I got up and walked out half way through. HORRIBLE!! This is a movie that couldn't be saved with a bag of weed and 10 of your funniest friends to watch it with. (and it made over $100 Million)

[Dejack]

He must be a fool.

Women are the most profound and intriguing of the species.

[artsandminds]

Oh shut up, and being a mom is the “hardest job in America”, just ask any pandering politician. No it’s just done by people who complain the most about it, try paving roads in the summer in Arizona, or mining in the hills of West Virginia, I think that is just a bit harder and a hell of a lot less rewarding, but it does tell us a lot about our self serving society that would gobble up that bullshit without calling what it is.

P.S. if your statement is true for you, you are obviously hanging around with the wrong men.

[cindyw]

Apparently you hang around with other misogynists. I bet Dejack gets laid more than you do.

[Dejack]

Generally speaking, men are simplistic, often violent creatures whose physical strengths just don't compare to the enduring, life giving force of women. Women's minds and bodies and emotions are far more complex, intricate and multi-layered than the average man's, who overall has a few basic needs and tendencies, then it's over. Nature even favors the female over the male -- probably for those reasons.

Who really wants or needs to see another car explode in a movie except a bunch of mindless men?

In the course of history who has and must start another war to see who's got the biggest balls except a bunch of men usually (just like Sally said)? Who f'ed up this country and Iraq but a simple-minded, dry-drunk man (who still sleeps good at night he said)?

Get out of the tar and the mines and meet some REAL women -- if you can. Judging by your post they probably won't let you near 'em.

[ControlledBurn]

You can quit either of the 'hard' jobs any time you like. Who's gonna raise you kids for you, putz?

[withowlseyewatch]

Boycott all movies, TV, and radio, except for Prairie Home Companion and Pipe Dreams. Instead of going to movies with female leads, give your movie money to young girls in your community who want to take piano lessons. Get out your dusty music books and practice too. Sing along for the fun of it. What's stopping you from sitting around the kitchen table with young children and creating hand-made puppet starring in spontaneous plays.

As for female movies stars...they are nothing more than glamorized prostitutes. Does this mean WB is tired of their endless string of whorify stories.?

American girls and women never needed men to make movies that glorify pretty soldier boys marching off to rape and murder the girls and women of other lands... so the news that WB will make no more movies with female lead roles is the best news of the day.

[DinahMoeHum]

Hickory Dickory Dock - Robinov can go suck his cock.

[barrycourage]

That might be the issue.

He prefers men on his casting couch.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I read another thing where I think Warner Bros
is in some multi-billion dollar deal with
some place in the middle east. Is the new
CEO named al-something?

[Destin]

I guess Warner Bros wont be making any movies about Queen Elizabeth, Isabella, Boudica, Victoria, etc, etc, nor such noteable women as Joan of Arc or Kara Hultgreen or Anne Frank or Susan B. Anthony.....

What they gonna do, get Clay Aiken or Arnold Schwarzenegger to play those roles??

[withowlseyewatch]

It would be preferable that WB not make anymore movies about women they deem as noteable. Every women has a story. Notable women live in every community. Take time to recognize their good works. Better yet, give money to women's projects that build strong, creative individuals. Don't go to the movie, go to a women in business network group and support their businesses.

[artsandminds]

Yes, fight sexism with sexism, make all your choices based solely on the gender of the individual, choose to do business that only women own, and support project just about women, and become what you claim to appose, or is it only when it does not serve your specific gender.

[situationcritical]

No really, I mean it...to hell with Gloria Allred.