If memory serves, the recent Jodie Foster movie did place #1 in the box office on its opening weekend. Granted, the film grossed somewhere around $20 million (though I think it was less), which is low compared to big hits like Spidey or Transformers, but still. It was released when there just weren't that many good movies out there.
The problem I have with Hollywood are these shitty horror flicks. They are produced for pennies on the dollar, meaning they can hire nobodies or washed-up TV actors. They aren't even good horror movies, either. Leave that genre to the Rob Zombies of the world...people who can do them right. These "scary" movies pop up every month, it seems. There was a time when you'd only see them around Halloween... flash forward to October 2007 and there are no promising scary movies scheduled for this Halloween. MAYBE Saw IV, but c'mon. The only one that looks like it MIGHT be worth seeing is that new vampire flick, but that isn't even exciting. It's a sad state of affairs when the only movie that scares the piss out of people these days is An Inconvenient Truth.
As far as women in leading roles, the writing just isn't there. For example, Aeon Flux and Ultraviolet could have been really great if their writing had been better. Both were very visually appealing, the actresses' performances were just fine, and they had decent stories, but the typical viewer didn't invest any emotions into the main characters because "decent" just doesn't cut it these days.
