Who need women? Not Warner Brothers, at least not in starring roles. So writes LA Weekly’s Nikki Finke in her blog Deadline Hollywood Daily . She reports that Warner Bros president of production Jeff Robinov has decreed that the studio will “no longer [be] doing movies with women in the lead."

It seems he's blaming the box office flops of The Brave One and The Invasion on the fact that they starred Jodie Foster and Nicole Kidman. I guess it couldn’t have had anything to do with the fact that those movies kinda sucked, could it? Any chance that some men were involved in writing and directing those films? Just wondering.

Granted, Warner Brothers has historically been renowned for its hard-guy movies. This is the studio built on the gangster classics of Bogart and Cagney, and that makes it a fitting place for Clint Eastwood to hang his shingle, as he has for most of his career. But they also had Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis (once known as “The Fifth Warner Brother”), Joan Crawford, and Jane Wyman, and not for eye candy, either.

It’s ludicrous to think of all the movies that wouldn’t get made today if it were up to Warner Brothers. I re-watched the endlessly entertaining Working Girl on AMC the other night; they’d never make that now, despite the fact that Harrison Ford was given top billing over both Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver. Oscar winners like The Queen, The Hours, Monster and Erin Brockovich would have to look elsewhere for financing.

Classic movie fans often lament that there don’t seem to be great parts for women any more. There are—it’s just that bottom-line driven Hollywood isn’t the place to look for them.