Once upon a time, Elizabeth Banks wrote, directed, produced, and starred in a big-screen reboot of Charlie’s Angels. The film featured Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska as a new generation of Angels working for a private detective agency known as the Townsend Agency. Charlie’s Angels received mixed reviews upon release and under-performed at the box-office, grossing just $73.3 million worldwide.
Looking back on the Charlie’s Angels reboot, Elizabeth Banks told The New York Times that she wishes the marketing for the film hadn’t pushed the “just for girls” angle.
I wish that the movie had not been presented as just for girls, because I didn’t make it just for girls. There was a disconnect on the marketing side of it for me.
Elizabeth Banks added that she’s proud of the movie. “I loved Kristen Stewart being funny and light,” Banks said. “I loved introducing Ella Balinska to the world. I loved working with Patrick Stewart. It was an incredible experience. It was very stressful, partly because when women do things in Hollywood it becomes this story. There was a story around Charlie’s Angels that I was creating some feminist manifesto. I was just making an action movie.” Banks said that she was “able to direct an action movie, frankly, because it starred women and I’m a female director, and that is the confine right now in Hollywood.“
Elizabeth Banks’ next film will be Cocaine Bear, which sounds like a win by the title alone. The film stars Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, and the late Ray Liotta, and has been described as “a character-driven thriller inspired by true events that took place in Kentucky in 1985.” As for that true story, it’s a doozy. In 1985, convicted drug smuggler Andrew Thornton was on a smuggling run from Columbia and had dumped several packages full of cocaine before bailing from the plane himself. Unfortunately, he hit his head on the tail of the aircraft and wound up in a free fall to the ground where he was found dead in someone’s driveway. Several months later, a 175-pound black bear was found dead after devouring approximately $15 million worth of cocaine that had been dropped by Thornton. Cocaine Bear will hit theaters on February 24, 2023.