Elizabeth Banks Felt ‘pigeonholed’ By ‘charlie’s Angels’ Marketing: ‘to Lose Control Of The Narrative Was A Real Bummer’

Elizabeth Banks is three features into her career as a director, and she has already proven that she can deliver crowd pleasing work in a wide variety of genres. After the success of “Pitch Perfect 2,” she ventured into action filmmaking with her Kristen Stewart-led “Charlie’s Angels” reboot before pivoting to horror comedy with the inimitable “Cocaine Bear.” And she’d prefer not to have her blockbuster filmmaking overshadowed by discussions of gender. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Banks looked back on the disappointing box office performance of “Charlie’s Angels.” (The film grossed $73.3 million worldwide against a $55 million budget.) She lamented the fact that the film was billed as an ideologically-driven movie about feminism when she simply set out to make a crowd pleasing blockbuster. “For me, regardless of what the actual product was, so much of the story that the media wanted to tell about ‘Charlie’s Angels’ was that it was some feminist manifesto,” Banks said.