Actress and filmmaker Elizabeth Banks claimed that Hollywood is biased against female directors, telling Variety that her upcoming action-comedy flick "Cocaine Bear" was an attempt to break down existing stereotypes about women in the film industry.
"I definitely wanted to make something muscular and masculine," she told the outlet's Adam B. Vary in an article published Wednesday.
"I wanted to break down some of the mythology around what kinds of movies women are interested in making. For some bizarre reason, there are still executives in Hollywood who are like, ‘I don’t know if women can do technical stuff.’ There are literally people who are like, ‘Women don’t like math.’ It just persists." she added.
The film, set to debut on February 24, focuses on a CGI-generated bear that consumes a large amount of cocaine and goes on a rampage through the woods. The flick is loosely based on a true story of a bear found dead in Georgia's Chattahoochee National Forest in the 1980s after overdosing on cocaine.
She called the film a "ginormous risk," telling Vary that, "this could be a career ender for me."
Banks, who also produced, directed and starred in the 2019 box office flop "Charlie's Angels" based on the popular 1970s TV series, also alleged sexism was behind its poor performance at the time, telling The Herald Sun that men "don’t go see women do action movies."
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The actress headed off any rebuttals about modestly successful female-led action flicks like "Wonder Woman" and "Captain Marvel" by saying that "comic book movies" were a "male genre."
"By the way, I’m happy for those characters to have box office success, but we need more women’s voices supported with money because that’s the power. The power is in the money," she said.
Banks told Vary during their discussion that Hollywood still presents struggles for women in the post-#MeToo era.
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"Even if you’re an ambitious, talented, creative person who likes the work that they’re doing, Hollywood is not handing out paydays to women in their 40s and 50s," she said.
"As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized how slow progress is. I can only push so much, but I will keep pushing. For me, that’s really what it comes down to," she added.
Despite the struggles Banks credited to being a female producer, she saw success from directing the popular Rebel Wilson-led "Pitch Perfect" films, focusing on an all-female acapella group.
