9 upcoming movies rebooting with female leads
Remember the first Transformers, which had the high-concept premise, ‘a boy and his car’? Well, Bumblebee is an ‘80s-set prequel with the high-concept premise, ‘a girl and her car.’
The trailer even uses dialogue from the original to make the connection clear. Back then, it was Shia LaBeouf, now it’s Hailee Steinfeld – but this fresh-start for the franchise (Steinfeld’s Charlie Watson is the series’ first female lead) looks like it has potential. The Iron Giant crossed with Transformers? Shut up and take our energon cubes.
Variety announced this gender-swapped reboot in 2015, with Ronda Rousey set to star in the Patrick Swayze role, but it’s stuck in development hell, thanks to director Nick Cassavetes’ decision to head to the MMA with Blake Lively instead, for a different kind of female-led fight flick, Bruised.
Announced in 2012 by Millennium Films, the female Expendables – tentatively called The Expendabelles is still being developed.
Let’s hope they’ve moved on from the original synopsis, which saw the world’s deadliest female operatives posing as high-class call-girls shipped in by private plane to satisfy a dictator in order to save a scientist. Seriously.
Taraji P. Henson stars in next year’s update of Nancy Meyers original, which saw Mel Gibson able to read women’s minds. Call us crazy, but we think the reboot will allow Henson to read men’s minds. It’ll be directed by Adam Shankman either way.
Okay, so this isn’t an official reboot of a former franchise, but with basically every single article about this film describing it as ‘John Wick with a woman’ (if so, why, oh why did they not call this ‘Jane Wick?’), we reckon it counts.
Jennifer Garner returns to her Alias roots as a woman who decides to take violent kung fu revenge after her family are gunned down by criminals.
Right, this one is a total cheat, but take a look at any trailer for Widows and tell us it isn’t a Heat reboot. That film explored the complex relationships between men and women when the men also happen to list ‘committing heists’ as one of their hobbies. Widows, meanwhile, sees the women do the dirty work. There’s shots in the trailer – Viola Davis looking out of her apartment onto a sea view, the choice of masks at the end of the trailer – which look shot-for-shot similar to Heat. Which isn’t a bad thing, as far as we’re concerned.
Now named ‘The Hustle’ – this adaptation of the story that inspired the Steve Martin and Michael Caine con flick, will see Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson in the lead roles. Currently filming in London, the movie will be out next year.
Scheduled for release next year, Disney’s Rocketeer reboot will be set six years after the original, and will follow a female pilot flying through the sky to prevent a corrupt rocket scientist from stealing jet-pack technology during the Cold War. With a woman-led Rocketeer TV series also in the works, it’ll be a race to see what hits screens first.
With the original book and two previous cinematic adaptations being very much about toxic masculinity, and what happens when boys are allowed to live without rules, it’s certainly an interesting decision to reboot with an all-female cast, but that’s what Warner Brothers are doing. Twitter’s unsure how to feel about it – but the fact it’s being written by two dudes isn’t helping.
Ocean’s 8 is on the way, and Warner Brothers will be hoping it does a bit better than Ghostbusters: Answer The Call, the last blockbuster to gender-swap an iconic franchise property.
But whether it succeeds or fails, this lot will still be waiting in the wings.
Click the slideshow to see nine new women-led movies that are all riffing on properties we usually associate with blokes.
Read more
Cate Blanchett says she tried to get out of Ocean’s 8
Rian Johnson slams Star Wars trolls after Kelly Marie Tran quits social media
Jared Leto is getting his own solo Joker movie, and DC fans aren’t happy