Oooooh, I love this questionâ for context, when I was in university this is what I did my gender and film thesis on, and itâs a really interesting thing. The answers could be, briefly: Marvel, Katherine Heigl, industries skewing toward white male audiences, and raunch comedy.
At the time (and now, if weâre very honest) there was a misconception that women audiences and Black audiences would go to see films with white male protagonists, while white men wouldnât pay to see women and Black men and Black women in filmsâ movies like Barbie, and Black Panther, and Wonder Woman really disprove this, but studios arenât particularly brave, and can be particularly biased. So Spider Man is a safer choice than 27 Dresses, but it costs much more to make Spider Man; so a studio that used to put out 5 mid-budget romantic comedies will consolidate that budget and make one Fast&Furious, or Avengersâ these are also easier to franchise, because itâs hard to make a series of a movie that ends in happily ever after (Bridget Jones being the exception that proves the rule).
Additionally, around the early 2000âs the tone of romantic comedies shifted pretty radicallyâ we shift from Sleepless in Seattle to No Strings Attachedâ the movies are raunchier, they tend to play on one trope (type A woman embarrassed by but ultimately in love with a slacker man). Katherine Heigl was in a few of these, and while she didnât write these roles and wasnât responsible for poor audience reception, we associate her with the âdeath of romcomsâ for that reason. The romcom used to be a mid-budget vehicle for female actors to gain stardom/recognition (Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, etc.) but Katherine Heigl got very typecast and the fear of getting stuck as one kind of actor made those roles less appealing. So the movie theater romcom died, and we had these almost TV movies with Justin Timberlake and starlets transitioning from TV to film. There were a few notable indie romcoms from that period (Garden State, 500 Days of Summer) but these notably revolve around a male protagonist and the female characters are more stagnant. Even now, the few romantic comedies that come out are stylistically much differentâ theyâre wealthier (Anyone But You) and more photoshopped feeling. Compare a Norah Ephron apartment with the settings of a romantic comedy from 2020 on, and youâll see a stark visual difference.