After Box Office Flops, Kristen Stewart Calls Out Audiences for Ignoring Films by Women

Kristen Stewart grabbed a mic in a very industry room and said the quiet part out loud: even after MeToo, Hollywood still shrugs at movies made by women. And yeah, she has the bruises to prove it.

What she actually said

Speaking at the Academy and Chanel's Women's Luncheon in Los Angeles (per Variety), Stewart said that the post-MeToo optimism — that stories by and for women would finally be welcomed — has not played out. In her words, telling frank, darker, or taboo stories about women's lived experiences still triggers pushback. She called the recent slide backward "statistically devastating," pointing to how few films in the past year were directed by women. Her blunt takeaway was less pep talk, more reality check.

"We need to become ladies who lunch all the fucking time."

That was her half-joke, half-strategy: build power together, constantly, instead of waiting to be invited to someone else's table. She also knocked the industry's boys' club culture and told the room to stop chasing approval from it.

The career context (and why people are reading into it)

Some are connecting Stewart's fire to her own career experience. Since Twilight, she has taken big swings — often interesting ones — that mostly didn't translate to box office. For anyone keeping score, here's the recent track record that keeps getting cited:

• In the Land of Women (2007) — budget: $10 million, box office: $14 million, Rotten Tomatoes: 43%
• Camp X-Ray (2014) — budget: $1 million, box office: $101,053, Rotten Tomatoes: 74%
• American Ultra (2015) — budget: $28 million, box office: $30 million, Rotten Tomatoes: 44%
• Charlie’s Angels (2019) — budget: $48 million, box office: $73 million, Rotten Tomatoes: 52%
• Seberg (2019) — budget: $8 million, box office: $1 million, Rotten Tomatoes: 36%
• Underwater (2020) — budget: $50–65 million, box office: $39 million, Rotten Tomatoes: 48%

Numbers are numbers, but context matters: some of these were tiny releases by design, some were January genre plays, and a few critics actually liked them. Still, if you want to understand the edge in her comments, it's not hard to see where it comes from.

Her fix: more support, less permission

Stewart name-checked the presence of heavy hitters like Greta Gerwig, Kathryn Bigelow, and Sofia Coppola to make the point that even with giants in the mix, the bigger system hasn't budged enough. Her solution is simple and pointed: women in the business should actively back each other, constantly — not just perform confidence for the room but actually cultivate it, together. And stop waiting for a nod from the boys' club.

So what's next for her

Stewart is about to enter the arena as a director with her first feature, The Chronology of Water. If her speech is any hint, she knows exactly how hard the road is for the kind of raw, uncompromising material she wants to make — and she's making it anyway. The Chronology of Water is expected to hit the US in January 2026.

What do you make of Stewart's comments? And are you curious to see what she does behind the camera with The Chronology of Water?