Elizabeth Banks wishes Charlie's Angels hadn't been marketed as 'feminist manifesto'

Elizabeth Banks wishes Charlie's Angels hadn't been marketed as 'feminist manifesto'

Elizabeth Banks regrets the way 'Charlie's Angels' was marketed.

The 48-year-old actress - who directed and appeared alongside leading trio Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska in the 2019 reboot - has reflected on the movie's poor performance at the box office, and the way it was presented to potential customers.

Speaking to the New York Times newspaper, she said: "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.

"[I] would’ve liked to have made ‘Mission: Impossible,’ but women aren’t directing ‘Mission: Impossible.' "

Banks - who has also directed the likes of 'Pitch Perfect 2' and upcoming thriller 'Cocaine Bear' - explained she wanted to make a different movie but was restrained by the representation of women in Hollywood.

She added: "I 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.

"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."

'Charlie's Angels' first started as a TV series in the 1970s before jumping to the big screen in 2000 with a sequel 'Full Throttle' released three years later.

Now, Banks feels like she is in a "rarefied category" by being a female filmmaker, but she can't assess whether the industry is becoming more accepting.

She said: “I’m putting my head down and showing these big corporations that if they give women the opportunity to do this job, they can make a good product that can make them a profit.

“It’s a male-dominated industry. It’s a male-dominated world. That’s what I’m up against, but I can’t solve it, and I don’t really want to analyse it.”