The remake of films has always been an important part of Hollywood and the film industry, reimaging ideas or developing characters to be bigger better, or deeper and darker. There is a popular trend in Hollywood at the moment and that in the remake of films by altering the gender role in films. Over the past year we have seen films like Ghostbusters being reimagined with female leads and others soon to be released as a female led version of Oceans Eleven, The Expendables and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels but is the idea of the remake now reached a point where the concepts are becoming just a bit to much and a bit too petty?

There is a constant argument that women are not depicted correctly in the industry and in the media, however is remaking iconic films and just changing the gender roles enough of a strong statement to reestablish the woman in the media industry or is it just a cop out and easy way to bring a solution to something that delves so much deeper.

There have been many articles over the years stating that there is still a big gap between the roles in Hollywood and that women are severely underrated. As Variety states:

The gender gap is documented in new research by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University that found that females comprised a paltry 12% of protagonists in the top-grossing films of 2014. Over the past decade, the situation has gotten worse, not better. The latest figures represent a drop of three percentage points from 2013 and a fall of four percentage points from 2002.

The article goes onto state that only 29% of women have main roles in films and only 30% have speaking characters. Whilst people love certain film cults and have a strong following, remaking them just to have female leads is not the answer to solving the misunder-representation of women in Hollywood instead it could lead to having a negative impact on the gender instead.

Take for example the Ghostbusters remake that was released this year, whilst some people were giving the film positive reviews, the film lost a whopping $70 million at the box office and the fact that it failed could tarnish the fact that it was lead by females. Whilst this wasn’t the case, it was probably because it was a remake of a film that was better in  its time of original release, the female leads will probably be the ones to be blamed for the failure.

An article by the Metro defines the art of the remake in Hollywood in a very strong and clear summary of a sentence:

Remakes are seen as the ‘safe’ option, even though audiences are getting seriously tired of them.

It not just the women though that are now seeing the roles of gender being used to swap a film as Channing Tatum is set to appear in a gender swap version of the film Splash seeing him as the mermaid.

Whether or not this gender swapping remakes style of film is just in fashion or the look of things to come, it could be a temporary solution for Hollywood to fill in a tiny gap for women lead roles in films whilst they work out a long term plan to make the gender more represented.