Advertisement

Elizabeth Banks Wishes Her 2019 'Charlie's Angels' Movie Wasn't Marketed as 'Just for Girls'

Elizabeth Banks 'Charlie's Angels' film premiere, Arrivals, Regency Village Theatre, Los Angeles, USA - 11 Nov 2019 Wearing David Koma Same Outfit as catwalk model *10411739ar and Hana Cross
Elizabeth Banks 'Charlie's Angels' film premiere, Arrivals, Regency Village Theatre, Los Angeles, USA - 11 Nov 2019 Wearing David Koma Same Outfit as catwalk model *10411739ar and Hana Cross

Matt Baron/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Banks took issue with how her action movie was marketed.

Banks wrote, directed, produced and starred in 2019's Charlie's Angels reboot, which featured Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska as the lead trio. The movie underperformed at the box office at the time, and when asked about that in an interview with The New York Times this week, she said that the marketing campaigns didn't align with her vision.

She prefaced her comments by saying it's a "long conversation that I don't know that I want to get into" since it might get her "in trouble."

"Let me say I'm proud of the movie," said Banks. "I loved Kristen Stewart being funny and light. I loved introducing Ella Balinska to the world. I loved working with Patrick Stewart. It was an incredible experience. It was very stressful, partly because when women do things in Hollywood it becomes this story. There was a story around Charlie's Angels that I was creating some feminist manifesto. I was just making an action movie."

"I would've liked to have made Mission: Impossible, but women aren't directing Mission: Impossible," she continued. "I was able to direct an action movie, frankly, because it starred women and I'm a female director, and that is the confine right now in Hollywood."

RELATED: Kristen Stewart on How She Related to Funny Charlie's Angels Character  

CHARLIE'S ANGELS, from left: Kristen Stewart, Ella Balinska, Naomi Scott, 2019.
CHARLIE'S ANGELS, from left: Kristen Stewart, Ella Balinska, Naomi Scott, 2019.

Merie Weismiller Wallace/Columbia/Courtesy Everett Collection

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free weekly newsletter to get the biggest news of the week delivered to your inbox every Friday.

Banks added, "I wish that the movie had not been presented as just for girls, because I didn't make it just for girls. There was a disconnect on the marketing side of it for me."

Elsewhere in the interview, Banks explained the tricky situation of being one of "very few female directors in Hollywood" in a "male-dominated world."

"That's what I'm up against, but I can't solve it and I don't really want to analyze it. It's not interesting to me," she said. "It puts me, frankly, in a position where the studio head is going to read it in The New York Times and be like, 'Wow, that Liz Banks has got a lot to say.' I don't need that added pressure. I truly feel that it's dangerous to talk about these things now."

Banks previously directed 2015's Pitch Perfect 2, and her next film as director is 2023's Cocaine Bear. She also revealed in her interview that she was once told "to my face" by a "big producer of big action movies" with "a lot of power in our industry" that she "couldn't direct action, that male actors were not going to follow me."

"He was flummoxed at the idea that a woman would be able to lead the Rock on a CGI screen, I guess?" she said.

Back in November 2019, Banks addressed Charlie's Angels' box office performance in a tweet, joking, "Well, if you're going to have a flop, make sure your name is on it at least 4x. I'm proud of #CharliesAngels and happy it's in the world."