What in the actual fuck?!?! How can you change not only the race, but the sex of a character that is over 60 years old!?!?!
You know what, fuck it! If they're willing to do this to Bond, I want Wonder Woman to be played by The Rock in the next movie!
I also love how they are more than willing to have a white fictional character played by a black person (Bond, Kingpin), but there would be riots in every shit town if they had a white guy play a known black character! Imagine if they cast Zach Efron as the Black Panther in the sequel, someone please make it happen! lol
But take a look at the actual box office:
here's a link to how all of the marvel films have done at the box office:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=marvelcomics.htmNow what do we see?
Outside of the Avengers films- which are basically mega-crossover events- the best performing standalone film was Black Panther. The Next best performing was Captain Marvel. (of course Marvel cooked the books for those films
) Then after that, is Iron Man 3, the one in which Pepper Potts' role was most prominent and she donned an Iron suit. We also see that of the Thor movies, the first two did about the same box office, while the third (with the female antagonist and the black lesbian sidekick) did more than $100 million more.
When you look at the DC universe box office- similar trends:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=dccomics.htmThe top spots go to two of Nolan's Dark Knight films, but of the films from the more recent rebooted universe, the most successful stand alone is Wonder Woman. The next best grossing project was Aquaman starring Jason Mamoa (who I think is somoan) supported by Amber Heard and Nicole Kidman.
Then let's take a look at the John Wick series:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=wick.htmThe first film did 43 million and the second did 92 million. But the third film, the one that everyone was disappointed to see halle berry in, did $172 million, nearly double the previous film.
You can parse these numbers in a lot of different ways and of course the numbers aren't solely due to adding a darkie to the cast, but it's pretty clear that diversifying a film cast is a pretty reliable way to help it break out.
Couldn't disagree more.
If diversity is the desire, create new characters from scratch, don't co-opt established white male characters.
Why would you expect this from an industry that is almost exclusively dealing in pre-existing properties at this point?
