Studios are reluctant to make films featuring strong female protagonists, with Julie & Julia the only hit film this year to break the trend

To earn her two Oscars, Hilary Swank went mano a mano with Clint Eastwood in a boxing ring and sucked face with Chloe Sevigny. But her toughest test is the box office numbers for her most recent work, Amelia. The historical drama, about the pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart, represents a major risk in Hollywood where studio executives have been increasingly wary of making movies about strong women.

Swank—who also executive produced Amelia—was optimistic. “I think things ebb and flow, and someone out there who crunches numbers probably affects that,” she said regarding studios’ reluctance to make films about strong women. Amelia was produced and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, a subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox.

Strong women, for now anyway, are out. Two years ago, when the Jodie Foster vigilante thriller The Brave One failed at the box office, industry blogger Nikki Finke reported that a Warner Brothers production executive announced to staffers that the studio would no longer produce movies featuring female leads. This past summer, actress and writer Nia Vardalos blogged on the Huffington Post that when she was pitching a project to a studio executive, he asked that she change the female lead to a man. Why? Because “women don’t go to movies,” he told her. “When I pointed out the box office successes of Sex and The City, Mamma Mia! and Obsessed, he called them ‘flukes,’ “ she wrote.

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