Why the world real­ly doesn’t need an all-male Bad Moms

A female-cen­tric com­e­dy about stressed out moth­ers decid­ing to let loose, Bad Moms defied expec­ta­tions to become one of the year’s most suc­cess­ful releas­es, gross­ing over $170m world­wide from a bud­get of just $20m. So what bet­ter way to cel­e­brate than with a sequel? Well, not exact­ly. Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, the film’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny STX Enter­tain­ment has announced plans for a role rever­sal spin-off called Bad Dads, hav­ing appar­ent­ly com­plete­ly missed the point as to why the orig­i­nal per­formed so well.

In a genre already over­crowd­ed with male casts, Bad Moms proves that there is still a huge demand for female-led come­dies in spite of the dis­ap­point­ing back­lash to the recent Ghost­busters reboot. It’s frus­trat­ing there­fore that STX has decid­ed not to cap­i­talise on this oppor­tu­ni­ty by reunit­ing the orig­i­nal cast while intro­duc­ing new female char­ac­ters. For their part, STX recent­ly point­ed out that ​“sequels gross 68 per cent less than the orig­i­nals,” but this shouldn’t pre­vent them from reach­ing out to the same demo­graph­ic they engaged so effec­tive­ly this summer.

Of course, Bad Dads might not be just anoth­er gross-out male com­e­dy – it could yet exam­ine mod­ern pater­nal anx­i­eties in a way that movies like Old School, Bad Neigh­bours and The Hang­over films sim­ply missed. But the sig­nif­i­cance of Bad Moms’ all-female cast and sub­se­quent suc­cess should not be over­looked. By res­onat­ing with an under­rep­re­sent­ed demo­graph­ic, the film point­ed the way for stu­dios as far as female-led come­dies are concerned.

But with STX appar­ent­ly hav­ing no faith in their own win­ning for­mu­la, this can only be viewed as a step back for gen­der diver­si­ty in Hol­ly­wood. That this looks like being a rare exam­ple of a female-cen­tric com­e­dy launch­ing a pop­u­lar fran­chise, while notable in its con­verse­ness, is scant consolation.