Joss Whedon has a reputation for writing strong women characters. Two of the television shows he has written featured a female lead, while all of his work features fully developed female characters to some extent.
Even when Wheldon came on to the Avengers movie, he brought a compelling female character to the film in Maria Hill. Despite her short screen time, she proved a successful character when played by Cobie Smulders in the film.
Despite his attempts to bring more women characters into the Marvel movie universe, he has yet to bring a female superhero to the franchise. While doing the rounds on his upcoming Much Ado About Nothing adaptation, Whedon talked about the difficulties involved with making a female led superhero movie.
He tells The Daily Beast that previous super-heroine led film failures and a lack of toy sales has made it hard to bring strong female superheroes to the silver screen.
"Toymakers will tell you they won't sell enough, and movie people will point to the two terrible super-heroine movies that were made and say, you see? It can't be done. It's stupid, and I'm hoping The Hunger Games will lead to a paradigm shift. It's frustrating to me that I don't see anybody developing one of these movies," says Whedon.
Whedon's name drop of the Hunger Games' franchise is an interesting one. The Jennifer Lawrence led film franchise has proved popular with audiences. It is one of the few female led action films to feature a well-developed female lead and produce at the box office.
Its success comes in comparison to films such as Catwoman and Elektra. Those films proved to be bombs at the box office. However, their failure most likely had more to do with them being bad than being led by a female lead.
The Halle Berry-led Catwoman film suffered from critical distain. Catwoman has a nine percent rating on Rottentomatoes. The Jennifer Garner starring Elektra also proved to be a failure with critics with a 10 percent rating on the site.
Whedon says the lack of strong female superheroes is upsetting as a person with a daughter. He reports that his own daughter said the Black Widow and Maria Hill were her favorite characters.
"It actually pisses me off. My daughter watched The Avengers and was like, 'My favorite characters were the Black Widow and Maria Hill,' and I thought, Yeah, of course they were," continued Whedon.
Whedon has attempted to bring super-heroines to the movies in the past. He spent many years trying to get a Wonder Women film off the ground with Warner Brothers. Unfortunately, the studio eventually passed on the film after a lengthy period of development.
