--- description: Even though movies with stronger female characters are more lucrative, this summer's likely blockbusters are still heavily male title: Summer Movies 2014: Bechdel Test Report from FiveThirtyEight image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6e48fa2e49799749/69868881169ab01e6e27890e/tammy.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Sure, Movies With Women Make More Money — But Movies With Men Will Dominate This Summer  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 2, 2014 8:00 PM CUT  Susan Sarandon and Melissa McCarthy in 'Tammy' Susan Sarandon and Melissa McCarthy in 'Tammy'Michael Tackett / Warner Bros. Entertainment  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 2, 2014 8:00 PM CUT By now, it really shouldn’t come as a big surprise: movies with strong female characters aren’t the box-office bombs that conventional wisdom expects them to be. In fact, they tend to do _better_ than man-heavy movies. The latest proof comes in the form of [a FiveThirtyEight analysis](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-dollar-and-cents-case-against-hollywoods-exclusion-of-women/ "undefined") of box-office data and scores on the Bechdel Test, for which movies that pass must have two named female characters who discuss something _other_ than a man. The report, published yesterday, found that of 1,615 analyzed films released between 1990 and 2013, the ones that passed the test provided their makers with a better return on investment, even overseas. Though Hickey’s analysis is exhaustive, it’s not exactly news. A January [analysis of last year’s films](http://entertainment.time.com/2014/01/03/movies-with-strong-female-roles-make-more-money/ "undefined") found the same result, and _Frozen_ and _The Hunger Games_ have made the finding seem kind of obvious. But that doesn’t mean Bechdel-friendly movies are the new “tentpoles,” the movies studios make to hold up their yearly budgets. Tentpoles are the surefire hits that are meant to balance out riskier projects, and they’re seen as having guaranteed audiences of a wide array of moviegoers. And, [as a new summer-movie preview from Reuters makes clear](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/02/us-sequels-idUSBREA310SC20140402 "undefined"), the female-friendly movies that have been shown to bring in big bucks are still largely excluded from that line-up. Starting with this week’s _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_, by their count, a full 13 big-name sequels will be released between now and summer’s end. The slate is heavy on superheroes (_The Amazing Spider-Man 2_, _X-Men: Days of Futur_ _e Past,_ _Transformers: Age of Extinction_) and animation (_Rio 2_, _How to Train Your Dragon 2_). The summer is traditionally the time for action movies that the studio expects to go big, but these movies _don’t_ traditionally score well on inclusion of women. There’s no way to tell in advance whether these movies will actually pass the Bechdel test — though some, like _The Expendables 3_, which actually has zero women among its top-billed cast, are particularly unlikely to — but history has shown it’s unlikely. (For example, even though the _Iron Man_ movies have multiple female characters, they never actually speak to one another.) And even if the message about movies with multiple women _does_ trickle down to the studios, we may be stuck with dude-centric tentpoles: _Captain America_, for one, is destined to show up in theaters for [a good long while](https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/captain-america-chris-evans-confirms-six-film-marvel-131000461.html "undefined"). To be fair, even if those movies are the blockbusters their studios hope they will be, that doesn’t mean FiveThirtyEight’s findings won’t hold for the future. Because — according to popular wisdom, as well as the data — movies that passed the test tend to have lower budgets, they need to make less money in order to earn the same profit. And, if you take the whole year into account, there are definitely some tentpole-y movies about women on the way (_Mockingjay_, [for example](https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/hunger-games-catching-fire-contributes-massive-lionsgate-profit-235400531.html "undefined")). Still, perception matters, and it says something that men are still dominating the summer. That means that Melissa McCarthy has a lot to prove: her picture _Tammy_, co-starring Susan Sarandon, opens on July 4 weekend, the same slot that went to her blockbuster _The Heat_. It’s one thing to show that Bechdel-passing movies make money; it’ll be another to prove that their summer successes aren’t just flukes. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/46909/summer-movies-2014-bechdel-test-female-characters/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/46909/summer-movies-2014-bechdel-test-female-characters/"},"headline":"Sure, Movies With Women Make More Money — But Movies With Men Will Dominate This Summer","datePublished":"2014-04-02T20:00:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:55:05.571Z","description":"Even though movies with stronger female characters are more lucrative, this summer's likely blockbusters are still heavily male","url":"https://time.com/46909/summer-movies-2014-bechdel-test-female-characters/","keywords":["movies","Living","feminism","Hollywood","sexism","Superheroes"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6e48fa2e49799749/69868881169ab01e6e27890e/tammy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6e48fa2e49799749/69868881169ab01e6e27890e/tammy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"TAMMY","caption":"TAMMY","creditText":"Michael Tackett / Warner Bros. 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