After a decade of development hell, the female-led consumables movie The Expenda Belles is officially dead and producer Jeffrey Greenstein explains why. The action franchise was co-created by Sylvester Stallone and future Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings writer David Callaham and revolves around a group of mercenaries and their various missions around the world. Stallone also led the cast across The expendables movies alongside Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood ReporterJeffrey Greenstein of Millennium Films explained why the female-led consumables movie, The Expenda Belles, is no longer moving forward. The studio director called his biggest problem with the project during development the separation of the sexes, rather than merging them with the male team. Check out what Greenstein explained below:
I don’t think it’s necessarily a shift, at least not from our perspective. Perhaps it’s more that the rest of the world is now thinking about other stories to tell. Featuring The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Salma’s [Hayek] character was just so much fun, it made sense to build the second movie around her. We also like to work with the same people, so we did Till Death with Megan [Fox] and she’s in the new Expendables. It’s really just about working with talented people. But I’ll say something: we had tried to develop The Expendables, a female version of The Expendables, but my problem with that project was always to find a way to justify why we should have a women’s team. Instead of trying to explain that why not just women on the regular team and [they’re] badass? Instead of explaining why a female character got there and all, just do what you would do with a guy: show them what they look like.
Why scrapping the female-led consumables was the right decision?
The decision to cancel The Expenda Belles is sure to get mixed reactions among fans of the consumables movie franchise. Argument aside, many are sure to criticize the decision, as it won’t allow some of Hollywood’s more acclaimed female action stars to direct their own installment in the series. On the other hand, some will certainly welcome the choice, with more toxic viewers probably not interested in a female-centric one consumables movie, while others are likely to feel insecure about how a spin-off in the franchise could work.
However, there will certainly be many who agree with the decision to delete The Expenda Belles for the same reason as Greenstein, a desire to see more female characters in the feature films. The first consumables largely saw the female characters treated as damsels or sex objects, while introducing Yu Nan’s Maggie in The consumables 2 was a bit of a step in the right direction. The Expendables 3 almost got the franchise on track with the casting of Ronda Rousey as the former bouncer of the nightclub Luna, only to undermine the effort by making her a hostage for most of the film.
Given that there were never any actors associated with The Expenda Bellesthat also leaves the door open for those who qualify for the film to appear in the mainline consumables movie. Next Years The consumables 4 brought Megan Fox to the roster, once again creating the opportunity for better gender equality in the cast, especially considering she’s from villain and Till deathboth of which showed its action movie potential in more grounded dishes compared to the Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchises. Only time will tell if they learned their lesson when The consumables 4 opens in theaters on September 22, 2023.
Source: THR
