This fall was privy to Hollywood firsts and Hollywood backstabbing at its finest with director Catherine Hardwicke ‘s teen phenomenon, ‘Twilight,’ grossing $70 million at the box office in its first weekend and welcoming Hardwicke as the first woman director ever to dominate Hollywood with such a high return. Stephanie Meyer’s adapted first novel had already grossed more than $160 million dollars in its first few weeks and Hardwicke was touted as the industry insider to finally shift Hollywood from its paternal hands of testosterone theatre, (the same Hollywood who had recently declared Nicole Kidman as box office poison because she is a woman), and proved that teenage girls, once forgotten, were a viable and lucrative audience. But Twilight’s producers, Summit Entertainment, fired Hardwicke mid-promo junket, demanding the second installment of the franchise to begin principle filming in the New Year; Hardwicke wasn’t ready. When a director makes a movie for $40 million and that movie grosses more than four times that amount in its initial release, it’s not often the director is fired. It seems Hollywood is ready for a black male president but not yet ready to trust the keys of the city to its creative women.
Ginger Liu
There was an episode of The Avengers wherein we find that a whole bunch of women we’re being led by a man, when they initially believed they were rebelling against the male dominated society.
And that’s not even the weird part 🙂
For bringing this memory back to the forefront of my mind, I congratulate you.