Captain Marvel going higher, further, faster at the box office means its co-director has made history.
The Marvel superhero film has now officially grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, which means that Anna Boden is the first woman to direct a live-action film that achieved this milestone, notes Women and Hollywood's Melissa Silverstein.
A total of 38 films have grossed more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office, but of those, just two have been directed by women. Before Captain Marvel, the other was Disney's Frozen, which was co-directed Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck. Like Lee, Boden co-directed Captain Marvel alongside Ryan Fleck, and she was the first woman to direct a film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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Captain Marvel was the Marvel franchise's first movie centered entirely around a female hero, and it is now the first female-led superhero movie to gross $1 billion, with Wonder Woman having previously come close with $821 million worldwide. Forbes notes that if Wonder Woman 1984, which will be directed by Patty Jenkins again, improves upon its predecessor's gross, it could become the first movie directed by a solo female filmmaker to gross $1 billion ever. Frozen II, which Lee once again co-directs, will also likely hit $1 billion later this year.
Still, the lack of opportunities for female directors continues to be a problem in the industry, with a January 2019 study finding that in 2018, only eight percent of the top 250 highest-grossing movies of the year domestically were directed by women, per The Hollywood Reporter. This was actually down three percent from the previous year.
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