Steve McQueen: Hollywood studios are too worried about money to make LGBT films
The filmmaker is best known for '12 Years a Slave', 'Shame' and his latest movie 'Widows'
By Steve Brown
Words: Steve Brown
Steve McQueen believes Hollywood studios don’t want to make a film about gay characters because they are worried about money.
This year, there was a wave of LGBT movies being released including Love, Simon, Boy Erased, The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Alex Strangelove but they were still a minority compared to heterosexual romances.
But now Hollywood filmmaker McQueen – who brought us Michael Fassbender’s penis on screen in the hit movie Shame – has weighed in on why film executives are still wary of creating a film around a gay character.
While speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, he said: “Also, the fact of the matter… gay characters.
“There are so many heads of studios, talent agencies in Hollywood yet have you ever seen a gay character just being a gay character, just being a detective, just being a person who is in a romantic comedy? Have you ever seen that?
“Yet the powers behind these agencies or studios are gay themselves but they never promote in a way who they are as human beings? Why? Possibly because they don’t think it will make money?”
Watch the full interview where he talks about Viola Davis, representation of the black community in Hollywood and his latest thriller Widows below: