![]() ![]() Sometimes, though, an edge peeks through her affability. Right before shooting “Cocaine Bear,” she made 2022’s “Call Jane,” an indie docudrama about abortion rights she starred in opposite Sigourney Weaver.īanks is candid and charming, regularly deploying her trademark robust laugh, the kind that can fill a room. While she produced the “Pitch Perfect” franchise, which earned $589 million globally, she also played Effie Trinket in the multibillion-dollar “Hunger Games” franchise. ![]() The following year, she launched Brownstone Prods., the company she runs with her husband, Max Handelman, with whom she has two sons, ages 9 and 10. In 2008, for instance, she played Laura Bush in Oliver Stone’s political biopic “W.,” and starred opposite Seth Rogen in Kevin Smith’s profane rom-com “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.” The diametrically opposed roles signaled to the industry that she could do anything. That kind of creative pragmatism has been a constant throughout Banks’ two decades in Hollywood. For some bizarre reason, there are still executives in Hollywood who are like, ‘I don’t know if women can do technical stuff.’ There are literally people who are like, ‘Women don’t like math.’ It just persists.” “I wanted to break down some of the mythology around what kinds of movies women are interested in making. “I definitely wanted to make something muscular and masculine,” she says. It was an opportunity for Banks - who was interested in directing 2017’s “Thor: Ragnarok” but never heard back from Marvel - to prove herself in a cinematic space that women are rarely invited to enter. “Cocaine Bear” is budgeted in the mid- to high-$30 million range, with most of the money going to Weta FX - the Peter Jackson-owned company that brought Pandora back to life in “Avatar: The Way of Water” - to create the furry drug addict with CGI. Nobody knows anything about what’s going to draw an audience except for perhaps dinosaurs, minions and superheroes.” “It’s why we make fewer of them than perhaps we did a decade ago. “We do enter the comedy space with a lot of trepidation these days,” Langley says. But the recent performance of high-concept, R-rated comedies - from “Bros” to “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” “Long Shot” to “Tag” - ranges from disappointing to downright depressing. High off the success of “M3gan,” Universal hopes “Cocaine Bear” can be another blockbuster that rides the wave of its viral trailer all the way to the box office. In today’s marketplace, really what you have to be is bold and fresh and different, and ‘Cocaine Bear’ certainly checks those boxes.” “She wasn’t afraid of how gonzo it needed to be. “She wasn’t afraid of the material,” Langley says. Universal Filmed Entertainment Group chairman Donna Langley is betting on her. With “Cocaine Bear,” though, Banks has found a way-outside-the-box opportunity to come back strong. “It was all laid on me and I happily accepted, because what else am I supposed to do?” “I took full responsibility for ‘Charlie’s Angels’ - certainly no one else did,” Banks says, fixing me with a hard stare. ![]()
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