Robinov Declares: No More Women Leads in Warner Bros. Films

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.

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Of course, Warner Bros has always been male-centric in its movies. But now the official policy as expressly articulated by Robinov is that a male has to be the lead of every pic made. I'm told he doesn't even want to see a script with a woman in the primary position (which now is apparently missionary at WB). Oh yeah, the fact that so many Warner Bros movies have been sucking at the box office for the last two years is all the fault of females. (Then again, Robinov's poorly performing Superman Returns was criticized for its girlie-man portrayal of the superhero.) As regular readers of my own box office reports know, chick flicks haven't been doing well at the box office lately.

But Robinov's statements aren't about women's movies as a genre, they're anti Hollywood actresses. Besides, neither The Brave One nor The Invasion were classic chick flicks, either. "It's a phenomenal thing to say. What are we in the 1700s where women are back to being barefoot and pregnant?" a producer railed. "What's next -- fire all the Warner Bros women executives?"