Hollywood Suicide? Warner Bros. Decrees: ‘No Longer Doing Movies With Women in the Lead’

Printer-friendly versionE-mail page to friendPDF version

Looking purely at dollar signs and apparently not thinking logically, Warner Bros. president of production Jeff Robinov has apparently made himself a new favorite executive for people to love to hate.

That’s because, according to Deadline Hollywood Daily, he has decreed that Warner Bros. is “no longer doing movies with women in the lead”.

The bold statement comes on the heels of weak box-office performances from Jodie Foster’s “The Brave One,” Nicole Kidman’s “The Invasion,” Emma Roberts’ “Nancy Drew” and Hilary Swank’s “The Reaping”.

The statement sounds like one of those someone might privately think somewhere but never have the nerve to say aloud let alone actually put into practice. This will not bode well for Warner Bros.

Here’s just one response already from noted women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred. She calls for a Warner Bros. boycott:

“When movies with men as the lead fail, no one says we’ll stop making movies with men in the lead. This is an insult to all moviegoers and particularly women.

It is truly unfortunate that women get blamed for decisions [that] are made by men.

Instead of taking responsibility for their own lack of judgment about which scripts to make, directors to hire and budgets to OK, some men in the movie industry find it easier to place blame for their lack of success on women leads.

[They will] exclude talented female actors from top employment opportunities in Hollywood in favor of macho males.

If that studio confirms that their policy is to now exclude women as leads, then my policy would be to boycott films made by Warner Bros.”

10:43 a.m. update on 10/10/07: As expected, Warner Bros. has fired back and denied this report.