While it’s taken nearly 20 movies to get a couple with female leads, Marvel has finally locked down a couple for the next phase of the MCU.
Captain Marvel is due in March (and looks AMAZING), Evangeline Lilly’s Wasp got equal billing in the second Ant-Man movie, and after eight thankless years of being underused in every single movie except The Winter Soldier, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow finally has a standalone movie in development.
Marvel insisted from early in the process that the film should be directed by a woman, and Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel – whose historical epic Zama is being hailed as one of the best Spanish language films in years – was one of the 70 or so candidates they met with.
But it sounds like they could have handled it a little better.
“What they told me in the meeting was ‘we need a female director because we need someone who is mostly concerned with the development of Scarlett Johansson’s character,’” she said at a film festival panel in Mumbai earlier this year.
Weird to suggest a male director would be incapable of directing a film where Scarlett Johansson’s character is developed.
And then she goes on:
“They also told me ‘don’t worry about the action scenes, we will take care of that.’”
“I was thinking, well I would love to meet Scarlett Johansson but also I would love to make the action sequences.”
“Companies are interested in female filmmakers but they still think action scenes are for male directors.”
Women simply aren’t given enough shots to direct at all, let alone chances to take on major studio projects like an MCU film – but execs are happy to take a punt on someone like Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow to go straight from no-budget indie to studio blockbuster.
The numbers speak for themselves: Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins is still the only woman to direct a major superhero movie.
Me, riding into the conversation armed with Wonder Woman’s box office figures.
Incredible action directors like Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, The Hurt Locker), Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Aeon Flux), and Michelle McLaren (The Walking Dead, Game Of Thrones) apparently still have some proving-themselves to do.
Aussie director Cate Shortland ended up being tapped to take on Black Widow. We’ll just have to wait to find out whether she’s allowed to direct her own action scenes.