--- title: How Thelma & Louise Changed Hollywood description: Loved this year's wonder woman or The Beguiled? Thank Thelma & Louise. Before its release, in 1991, movies about women were largely written and directed... canonical: https://time.com/4856212/how-thelma-louise-changed-hollywood/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-07-13T10:22:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-25T08:54:28.190Z article:section: Ideas og:title: How Thelma & Louise Changed Hollywood og:description: Loved this year's wonder woman or The Beguiled? Thank Thelma & Louise. Before its release, in 1991, movies about women were largely written and directed... og:url: https://time.com/4856212/how-thelma-louise-changed-hollywood/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8aacdd24dd03569b/6988d5758fd2ee5bea357f29/how-thelma-louise-changed-hollywood.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: How-Thelma-Louise-changed-Hollywood og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Thelma & Louise Changed Hollywood twitter:description: Loved this year's wonder woman or The Beguiled? Thank Thelma & Louise. Before its release, in 1991, movies about women were largely written and directed... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8aacdd24dd03569b/6988d5758fd2ee5bea357f29/how-thelma-louise-changed-hollywood.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Thelma & Louise Changed Hollywood by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Jul 13, 2017 10:22 AM UTC  by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Jul 13, 2017 10:22 AM UTC Loved this year’s wonder woman or The Beguiled? Thank Thelma & Louise. Before its release, in 1991, movies about women were largely written and directed by men and offered a watered-down version of womanhood. This explains why studios were so reluctant to greenlight a script from an unknown female screenwriter, Callie Khouri, about two women who broke the rules and took men to task for their bad behavior, argues Becky Aikman in her new book, Off the Cliff: How the Making of Thelma & Louise Drove Hollywood to the Edge. But the film was a hit, and Khouri won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay–proving that audiences had an appetite for stories “about grown-up women … where what’s at stake is bigger than who gets to sleep with whom,” as Aikman puts it, and paving the way for female-penned films like Lost in Translation and Bridesmaids. Now, she says, if only Hollywood would learn from those successes and greenlight more female-led projects. –SARAH BEGLEY ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4856212/how-thelma-louise-changed-hollywood/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4856212/how-thelma-louise-changed-hollywood/"},"headline":"How Thelma & Louise Changed Hollywood","datePublished":"2017-07-13T10:22:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-25T08:54:28.190Z","description":"Loved this year's wonder woman or The Beguiled? Thank Thelma & Louise. 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