Brie Larson 'grateful’ that ‘Captain Marvel’ proved female-led blockbusters can also make $1 billion

Ahead of the release of Captain Marvel there were some folks that genuinely believed female led films couldn’t succeed.

They pointed to the box office failures of Catwoman and Elektra, insisting they flopped because they were led by women, rather than because they were just awful films that didn’t have the backing of the studios that oversaw them.

Captain Marvel’s huge gross, which is currently $1.041 billion (£795 million) and counting, proves just how popular female led superhero films can be, and its star Brie Larson is understandably ecstatic at the impact the blockbuster is having.

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“We put unnecessary pressure on ourselves,” Larson recently told a crowd at the Women In The World conference in New York, according to Indiewire.

“I understand film history. I know that the film industry started with a majority of women. It started with women filmmakers. This weird idea that women maybe can’t open movies or are not important to storytelling or the female story is not high art, it’s bogus. I don’t want to for a second buy into it.”

“I’m very grateful to have broken this glass ceiling of normalising the concept that women can also make a billion dollars. I don’t know why that was so hard to comprehend in the first place. It’s just like we’re human, whatever. If people needed this to be another reminder this decade [that minority groups can open movies and make a billion dollars] then great. I’m here. I did it.”

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Larson admitted that she began to feel a little bit of pressure about whether Captain Marvel will succeed at the box office the night before it opened. Thankfully, this meant that the actress quickly discovered that it was going to be a huge success, as it recorded an opening weekend of gross of $456.7 (£348.5 million), which was the sixth-biggest of all time.

We’ll get to see Brie Larson as Captain Marvel again very soon, too, as she’ll pop up in Avengers: Endgame when it is released on April 25.