[ps4fanboy]

What I would much prefer to see is what effect the % of dialog has on profitability. Audiences buying behavior is what is responsible for what kinds of movies, actors and characters are made because movies are profit driven endeavor.

Looking at their data, I took the "top 20" male and female movies and compared their world wide gross, male movies averaged 50% more than female.

http://i.imgur.com/24dUzBD.png

[knucklesandwich]

How would this show the effect of male/female dialog on profitability? All it shows is that the most profitable films feature heavy male dialog, not that audiences select for more male dialog when seeing a film. And what is your thesis here anyways? That the film industry features men more heavily because society is misogynistic (just not the film industry itself)?

[ps4fanboy]

It would just show the bias of the consumer, which would explain the bias in the product? Action movies for example are incredibly male dominated and also very popular, until the general public is OK with seeing women getting beaten, killed and abused I dont see this ever changing.

The majority of the films in this list that have predominately female characters all fit into a specific mold of story telling with very little overlap with the types of movies that feature predominately male characters. I very much doubt that either group who consumes these types of movies is interested in the same sort of stories about the opposite sex. That of course is my opinion.

I dont see how any of that is misogynistic? That would be like saying teenage girls are misogynistic for favoring boy bands over girl bands.

[Animats]

"Action movies for example are incredibly male dominated and also very popular, until the general public is OK with seeing women getting beaten, killed and abused I don't see this ever changing."

Angelina Jolie has made several action movies where she gets banged up quite a bit. (Salt was originally designed for Tom Cruise; Jolie was a big improvement.) So has Scarlett Johansson (who, as Black Widow, ought to have an origin movie but isn't getting one.) Sigourney Weaver also had some tough times in her action movies. All of those were successful films.

[ps4fanboy]

Dominated - Have a commanding position over.

No one said they do not exist.

Salt is rated PG-13 Aliens while rated R is 37 years old.

I dont understand the point you are trying to make?

How many movies have you seen, where men beat up women? How many movie shave you seen, where women beat up men?

As long as society has asymmetric views on gender you will never have equality of roles in movies.

[knucklesandwich]

This is an almost tautological position though. Films have a gender bias because society has a gender bias because, among other things, films have a gender bias. The reality is human beings have agency to make new things, dismantle previous stereotypes, and create an equal footing. Female action stars are not a concept that puts us at an impasse for creating gender equality (in fact, I'd argue with things like the Hunger Games, some of the marvel films, etc. the trend is to begin featuring women incrementally more in action films). I still haven't seen any evidence that gender stereotypes or prevalence of women are a causal factor in profitability, but even if that were the case I think we need to ask ourselves if that's a just position to take for defensibility.

[ps4fanboy]

I haven't seen any evidence that gender equality in film dialog is a good thing.

[xiaopingguo]

Watching Game of Thrones recently, Brienne of Tarth gets really beaten up in the fight with the Hound. I do not recall having seen that level of prolonged physical action/violence on a woman in anything else before. Felt quite shocking to watch, even given the show's reputation.

[minimaxir]

I am currently working on a post (completely coincidental to the existence of the submission) attempting to determine the difference in domestic box office revenue from movies with male leads and movies with female leads.

[ps4fanboy]

It would be nice to see some control as well, like filtering out movies that do not make back their budgets (within reason), as they are probably just terrible movies regardless of diversity characteristics.

Or maybe a minimum gross filter of 500K?

[minimaxir]

I added filters for minimum 10M domestic revenue and released 2000 or later for various data fidelity reasons. (I do not have access to budget information so cannot account for that) Sample Size is still 2,012 which is good enough.

Spoilers: yes, movies which star male actors (fitting this criteria) earn significantly more than female leads on average, and it is statistically significant.

Additionally, there is no difference (practical and statistical) between RT/Metacritic scores of movies with male leads/female leads.

[ps4fanboy]

Which is odd because the box office os 50/50 on gender.

http://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MPAA-Theatric...

[minimaxir]

Thanks for that link. I'll include it in the post.

[DanBC]

Is there any way to control for "hype budget"?