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"  Photo: Getty Images Aaron Sorkin participated in a Q&amp;amp;amp;A Monday night in New York as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. The Newsroom creator, who has been lambasted for sexism in the past, fielded a question about the dearth of female protagonists in movies. The questioner noted that 52 percent of movie ticket buyers are women, but only 15 percent of movie protagonists are. She then asked if Sorkin was going to write a feature with a female protagonist any time soon. Per the New York Observer, Sorkin responded: I&amp;#039;ve always thought\u2026 I don&amp;#039;t know, is the answer to your question. You&amp;#039;re making a really good point about the disparity between who&amp;#039;s buying the ticket and who&amp;#039;s up on screen. Furthering that point, these decisions aren&amp;#039;t made entirely by men. There are roughly as many women who can green-light a film in Hollywood as there are men. From Amy Pascal at Sony to Stacy Snider at Dreamworks, Donna at Universal.  Indeed, there are a handful of very powerful women at studios, but there is nowhere near parity in the real world outside of Sorkin&amp;#039;s head. According to the SDSU Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, only 15 percent of executive producers and 25 percent of producers of the top 250 grossing films in 2013 are women. Those percentages basically have not budged since 1998.  Photo: Everett Collection Sorkin went on to blame a lack of good, women-centric scripts as the reason female protagonists don&amp;#039;t often grace the big screen. There&amp;#039;s no objective way to measure that, but somehow I think it&amp;#039;s more that movie executives are now trying to appeal to a global audience\u2014especially a Chinese audience\u2014rather than a domestic one. To appeal to a global audience, you need a recognizable name. According to commentators on the BBC, it&amp;#039;s estimated that superheroes have brand recognition in 60 countries at this point. This explains the proliferation of mediocre, male-dominated superhero movies clogging up our screens from May to October. (Although,kookier fare is also getting traction over seas.) The Observer lets Sorkin off the hook a bit\u2014&amp;quot;Mr. Sorkin can&amp;#039;t be expected to speak for the entire film and TV industry with one improvised answer,&amp;quot; Molly Mulshine writes. But instead of fumbling through a half-baked response, Sorkin could have done what his characters also seem constitutionally unable to do: admit to not knowing the answer. (C.J. Cregg, of course, excepted.)  Related: Olivia Munn Knows Her Body, What&amp;#039;s Funny Related: ELLE&amp;#039;s Women In TV Related: The C.J. Cregg Guide to Life "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/news/a24640/aaron-sorkin-and-the-future-of-the-female-protaganist/>