Charlize Theron is back this month with her immortal comic book movie “The Old Guard 2,” as the action sequel returns to Netflix with director Victoria Mahoney behind the camera, and the Oscar-winner is reflecting on the industry’s double standard concerning female action leads compared to male peers.
Speaking with The New York Times, Theron stated that the action genre isn’t an equal playing field, as you don’t often see female leads getting the same volume of greenlights from studios (seen as “risky”) and male counterparts get more of a “free ride” when their projects don’t exactly become hits with audiences or at the box office.
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“Action films with female leads don’t get greenlit as much as the ones with male leads. I think the thing that always frustrates me is the fact that guys will get a free ride. When women do this and the movie maybe doesn’t hit fully, they don’t necessarily get a chance again. With this, we were very aware that eyes were on us. It’s not a risk that studios want to take, but they’ll take it many times on the same guy who might have a string of action movies that did not do so well,” Theron told The New York Times.
Without naming names, there are certainly plenty of male actors in the action genre who could be seen as failing upwards, coasting with the smallest of acting efforts, and getting multiple chances to keep leading bombastic studio blockbusters after multiple disappointments without much of a slowdown in offers. Studios indeed don’t treat female leads the same, and we’re thankful that Theron is speaking up on the subject.
One of Charlize Theron’s box office missteps was the live-action feature adaptation of the MTV mature cartoon “Æon Flux,” which sadly impacted both the tentpole careers of director Karyn Kusama and Theron after the sci-fi action movie only mustered to earn $53.3 million on a budget of over $62 million, not including marketing costs.
Of course, the South African actress would eventually bounce back with successes such as “Hancock,” “Prometheus,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” (dealt with various on-set tensions with co-star Tom Hardy), “Atomic Blonde,” “The Fast & The Furious” sequels, and more. She’s also found a new home at Netflix with “Apex” on deck, is appearing as Circe in Christopher Nolan‘s “The Odyssey,” and is expected to reprise the role of MCU’s Dark Dimension sorceress Clea in future films like “Doctor Strange 3” or those upcoming “Avengers” sequels.
“The Old Guard 2” is currently streaming exclusively on Netflix, and you can read The Playlist’s review right here.
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