According to new data, it appears that the female audience for Marvel and Star Wars prefers movies and shows like Loki, The Mandalorian and the George Lucas films, rather than projects specifically “targeted” at them.
Echo is the least-watched among this demographic, and the Disney Star Wars Trilogy also happens to be less female-skewed.
Marvel and Star Wars are more male-skewing
The data comes via Parrot Analytics who released a chart about the demographic distribution of the Star Wars and Marvel franchises.
The data overwhelmingly reveals that both Marvel and Star Wars are male-skewing and that Star Wars, particularly, is more male-skewing and watched by an older audience.
Agent Carter, Jessica Jones, Loki are Marvel favorites
Data actually reveals that two canceled Marvel shows not part of the MCU, Agent Carter and Jessica Jones (confirmed by The Wrap), are more favorited among women.
These shows were produced by the now-defunct Marvel TV studio, which was responsible for the Marvel Netflix shows like Daredevil, and ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., all of which were canceled by Feige, and came at a time when it was not about agenda but more about putting out quality content.
It could be added that men simply didn’t tune in as much, which gives those shows a more female-skewing audience but at least the women tuned in.
On the flip side, Echo has an audience that is over 80% male. What happened to the diverse crowd the show was targeted at?
Where are WandaVision, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Hawkeye? According to the data, all of these shows have a more male-skewing audience, yet they are supposedly geared toward a female audience. Well, they aren’t watching.
Fans just want good content
We also see women are tuning in to watch Loki and The Mandalorian, which are simply good shows.
Could it be that women, like most fans, simply want to watch quality content and aren’t interested in anything that sends The Message?
What the data tells me is that women aren’t solely focused on whether they can “identify” with characters in a TV show or movie; they just want to watch good content, again, like most fans.
Star Wars favorites: Women prefer The Mandalorian over Ahsoka; A New Hope Over Disney Trilogy
Likewise, women prefer The Mandalorian over Ahsoka (by a large margin judging by the graph if Ahsoka is the closest to The Mandalorian to the right).
Again, Ahsoka is geared more toward the female crowd, but they aren’t tuning in as much. The Mandalorian (at least the first two seasons) is a better show.
We also see more women are watching A New Hope rather than the Disney Star Wars movies that actually have a female in the lead. Why? Again, because the George Lucas movies are good content.
Some other insights:
We also see Andor is on the far right, mostly made up of a small male audience (hard sci-fi show).
Interestingly, Guardians of the Galaxy has a more male-skewed audience (more sci-fi). This is likely because, when the movie was first released, nobody had heard of them, so the fanboys showed up in droves as it was also set during the height of the MCU. I’d bet more females came out for the sequels (as suggested by the higher box office numbers) because, again, they are good movies.
We also see that Solo: A Star Wars Story has a heavily male-skewed audience. This is another movie where the female audience didn’t show up (sorry, Emilia Clarke, it also didn’t work out for Terminator or Secret Invasion), and it bombed.
Story should come first not agenda
What the data reveals is that putting the agenda ahead of quality content and story isn’t working.
The better route to go, as reflected by the popularity, the ratings and the box office numbers, is to make good content.
When you make it all about the agenda at the expense of the story, the story suffers. A report from last year confirmed how diversity is the biggest loser. Why? Because they are making it about diversity first. I told you this five years ago.
How’d it work out for The Marvels?
Fans don’t want to see one group pushed ahead at the expense of another. Marvel and Star Wars have built-in audiences, and you shouldn’t disregard one audience to prop up another as Disney has been doing for years.
Instead, you should build them both up and make them both look good.
Doctor Who is another example where the current approach is a huge failure, and so is The Acolyte.
