In an interview with ComingSoon, director/producer Louis D’Esposito, who has been involved with most of the Marvel One-Shots, confirmed that there were plans for a female-led superhero movie. While the films have certainly had their share of female characters, the leads have been rather boy-centric. It seems Marvel Studios are keen to change that.
For a long time, it has been reported that all studios are keen to produce more female-led superhero films, but they’ve just been put in the “too hard basket”. Over at Warner, DC Comics property Wonder Woman has been in arrested development for years, with even Avengers helmer Joss Whedon taking a crack at it at one point. D’Esposito remarked in the interview:
“There’s obviously a drumbeat that is banging louder and louder that we want a female lead superhero. [W]e have strong female characters in our films from Black Widow to Pepper Potts to Peggy Carter and you never know. Maybe there’s an offshoot film with one of them. Or Captain Marvel, you know?”
The Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter is an example of strong female-led comic book stories.
The recent Marvel One-Shot Peggy Carter, directed by D’Esposito, is a great example of how this can work. It takes an existing character from within that universe, one that has to confront not only the bad guys but the sexism of the late 1940s/early 1950s – and kicks both of them squarely in the jaw. Yet he goes on to add that it may not simply be a matter of marketing, but of time as well:
“It’s hard because we have a small group at Marvel. We do two films a year. To get those two films done and to do them right takes a lot of work and manpower. And female-power, obviously. To add a third film and to just put it in the slate right now is difficult. We have these next three, four, five films coming out and that’s what we’re really concentrating on.”
Those next few films all have male leads, and even Guardians of the Galaxy has only a single female member of the core group with Zoe Saldana as Gamora. This was also case with The Avengers, the secondary character of Maria Hill notwithstanding).
A Captain Marvel film featuring Carol Danvers, and based on the successful current book by Kelly Sue DeConnick, isn’t outside the realm of possibility. If proof that it can be told succinctly with other stories is needed, then Marvel needs to look no further than its own Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes animated series. In the episode “459”, a 22-minute episode not only introduced the original Captain Marvel and the Kree threat, but Danvers gained her powers as well. Sounds like the first act of a film to us.
Marvel – make this happen and we’ll make ours Marvel forever.
