It would be a brave or foolish man in Hollywood to declare an end to films with women in the lead roles after a couple of femme-led films flopped. Even more so, when that guy is the head of production at a Hollywood studio.

Yet Warner Bros., president of production Jeff Robinov allegedly issued this decree to his staff a couple of months ago: "We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead." Robinov told colleagues a male has to be the lead of every pic the studio makes and he doesn't even want to see a script with a woman in the primary position, according to Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke, who broke the story in her Deadline Hollywood Daily column.

This "Neanderthal thinking," as Finke described it, followed the box-office bombs of Jodie Foster's The Brave One (despite her previous hits Flightplan and Panic Room) and Nicole Kidman's The Invasion; both Warner films.

The Brave One, for those who missed it, which is most of the cinemagoing population, was the amoral tale of a New York radio personality who seeks brutal retribution after she and her fiancé are attacked while strolling in Central Park, and he's killed.

The Invasion, which opens here in February, features Nicole and Daniel Craig as a psychiatrist and her doctor friend, who discover the mysterious crash of a space shuttle which has unleashed an extra-terrestrial epidemic. The virus attacks its victims while they sleep. When they awake they appear physically unchanged but they feel strangely inhuman: possibly not unlike the movie's affect on those who saw it. That film, a remake of the 1956 classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, had a troubled production. The Warner suits didn't like the rough cut by director Oliver Hirschbiegel, so they called in The Matrix duo, the Wachowski brothers, to rewrite the script and re-shoot with their V for Vendetta director James Mcteigue. None of that can be said to be Nicole's fault.

Finke's revelations touched off a firestorm of debate, not just about Robinov's alleged remarks, but about the wider issue of women being treated as second class citizens in Hollywood. Finke and other critics interpreted his opinions not as a criticism of "chick pics" per se, but as an attack on Hollywood actresses.

"If that's what he said, when movies with men as the lead fail, no one says we'll stop making movies with men in the lead. This is an insult to all moviegoers and particularly women," thundered women's rights attorney Gloria Allred.

It is truly unfortunate that women get blamed for decisions which are made by men. Instead of taking responsibility for their own lack of judgment about which scripts to make, directors to hire and budgets to OK, some men in the movie industry find it easier to place blame for their lack of success on women leads and to exclude talented female actors from the top employment opportunities in Hollywood in favor of macho males. If that studio confirms that their policy is to now exclude women as leads, then my policy would be to boycott films made by Warner Bros.

Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells countered that Robinov should have declared Warners would no longer back female-starring thrillers and actioners produced by Joel Silver. That's a good point: It was Silver who produced The Brave One and The Invasion as well as two other duds, Gothika and The Reaping.

The chick pics genre has generated some of the most enjoyable and memorable films over the years, typified by the Bridget Jones franchise and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The Devil Wears Prada was a ringing endorsement of the value of shrewd casting plus a smart script (albeit with a male director, David Frankel).

Still, other movies with a female-skew have had mixed fortunes recently, ranging from respectable box-office performers such as No Reservations, The Holiday, and Music and Lyrics, to flops like Nancy Drew and The Nanny Diaries.

And it's true that, with a few exceptions, romantic comedies have been in a long, slow decline since their heyday a decade or more ago, driven by stars such as Julia Roberts (My Best Friend's Wedding; Notting Hill), Meg Ryan (You Got Mail) and Sandra Bullock.

Is there any connection between a drop in the volume of female-angled films and the departure from executive suites of a number of high-powered women in the past couple of years?

Maybe. Tom Ortenberg, president of independent studio Lionsgate, detects a gender divide in Hollywood fare. "In general, female markets have been underserved, and the over-25 female audience is one that's dramatically underserved in the marketplace," he told The New York Times. "I don't know why that is. You could speculate that it's because this is a male-driven world, with people green-lighting the movies they feel most close to." However the NY Times' Sharon Waxman observes: "It is debatable whether the diminished number of women running major studios has had any effect on the kinds of movies being made. Studio executives, both men and women, have shown themselves to be pragmatists above all, choosing movies they think will make the most money." Sherry Lansing, who retired as the head of Paramount in late 2005, believes lifestyle choices, along with what she describes as the dumbing down of Hollywood movies, is affecting the number of women in the running for top jobs. "Most people who got into the movie business wanted to make a certain kind of movie: movies that were character-driven, that affected the way you thought, that had social content, political content," she tells the Times. "But now it's about opening weekend. "At a certain point, some women will say, 'I've done this enough. I have enough money. How long am I going to get up at 6 am and go to bed at 11 pm, six days a week?' Women also want to be in love. A huge percentage want children. They want friends. They want life.

Still, some long-time Hollywood producers feel something has shifted. "I feel that it's a different time; it's not the time that it was," says Lynda Obst, producer of Hope Floats and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. "I don't feel prejudice against me, not like in the early days," she adds, "but it's not like the heyday either. It's a boys' era. And the market is driving that."

"You don't see companies saying, 'More than half of the population is women, we should design a slate to come up with movies like The Break-Up and The Devil Wears Prada,'" says producer Lindsay Doran, whose credits include Nanny McPhee and Sense and Sensibility.

And it can't be denied women generally don't command the same stratospheric fees as the top male stars. Julia Roberts was the first of her gender to crack $US20 million for Erin Brockovich in 2000. Since then, reportedly only Cameron Diaz has earned a similar pay cheque, and that was for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle in 2003.

Last year the Hollywood Reporter estimated Nicole Kidman earns $16 million-$17 million per pic, with Reese Witherspoon and Renee Zellweger at about $15m, Halle Berry at $14m and Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron at $10m.

Nicole's cachet probably slumped after the flops Bewitched and The Stepford Wives; perhaps The Golden Compass, which opens here on Dec. 26, will enable her to bump up her asking price.

As for Robinov, he hasn't publicly denied the incendiary statement attributed to him, but he told Variety he's moving forward with several movies with women in the lead. And he made it clear he's offended by rumours of his cinematic misogyny.

Finke stands by her story. Before the Writers Guild went on strike, she reported Warners had three films in production and six in pre-production—and none had a woman as the main lead.

Moreover, she claimed Robinov had dumped plans to make Wonder Woman as a stand-alone film, downgrading the character to just one of four superheroes in the proposed Justice League.

The furor over Robinov's remarks doesn't seem to have hurt his career. Finke has written that he's been promised a promotion, to take effect in January 2008.