Hollywood’s Shortage of Female Power

By SHARON WAXMAN
Published: April 26, 2007

LOS ANGELES, April 25 — A few days after the annual ShoWest movie convention last month in Las Vegas, where the studios trotted out clips from coming horror films and a battle-heavy science-fiction spectacle, “Transformers,” the producer Cathy Schulman got an unusual call.

A scene from “300,” an action movie whose queen’s role was enhanced.

'We need a women’s picture,’ ” said the head of a Hollywood studio, whom Ms. Schulman declined to name. “ ‘Put it together.’ ”

With that, the studio executive revived a movie that Ms. Schulman, a producer of “Crash,” had long considered comatose, a romantic comedy-drama about a woman in her 40s. If the movie, as Ms. Schulman understood, was added as an afterthought to the studio’s slate, that is also one way to describe how some women in Hollywood are feeling these days.

While Hollywood has not stopped making films appealing to women and girls, as evidenced by recent and coming releases like “Music and Lyrics,” “Nancy Drew,” and “The Nanny Diaries,” women here worry that the future will not be so bright.

They are nervous about the disappearance of many of the movie world’s most visible female power brokers and concerned that a box office dominated by seemingly male-oriented action films like “300” means less attention for movies that have obvious appeal to female audiences, 51 percent of moviegoers.