Examples of Gender Flip in Live-Action Films.
- The 2018 film The Adventures of Thomasina Sawyer is an adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in which ... well, the title says it all, really.
- In the film adaptation of the comic Alena Fabian becomes Fabienne.
- Warrant Officer Ripley from the first film in the Alien franchise. It's a telling point in the Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality that the first iconic badass Action Girl role was actually originally written as a man.
- All the Troubles of the World: Corrections officer Ali Othrnan is changed to a female character and renamed Barbara Hammond.
- Dr. Kafka, the Ravencroft Institute's Mad Scientist in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, played by Marton Csokas, is a gender-flip (and Adaptational Villainy) version of Dr. Ashley Kafka, the Awesome Shrink who founded the Institute in the comics.
- Dr. Peter Leavitt is changed into Dr. Ruth Leavitt in the film adaptation of The Andromeda Strain.
- Sandy the dog, (a male in the previous adaptations of Annie as well as in Little Orphan Annie), is a female in Annie (2014).
- The 2020 Artemis Fowl movie turns the books' Commander Julius Root female, played by Dame Judi Dench, no less.
- In the Russell Brand remake of Arthur (2011), Hobson the butler, played by Sir John Gielgud in the original, becomes Lillian Hobson the nanny, played by Dame Helen Mirren. In addition, Arthur's mother takes the role his father had in the original.
- The 1967 version of Bedazzled starred Peter Cook as the Devil. The 2000 remake cast Elizabeth Hurley in that role.
- Burglar gender flipped several of the main characters, as well as giving a Race Lift to the protagonist. The movie was based on a series of novels by Lawrence Block about a white male bookstore owner/burglar. The screenplay was written after Bruce Willis passed on the role and it became a vehicle for Whoopi Goldberg.
- Critics pointed out that much of Byzantium is basically a gender-flipped take on Jordan's earlier film adaptation of Interview with the Vampire.
- In the low-budget 1990 Captain America movie, Professor Erskine is reimagined as a female scientist named Maria Vaselli.
- In the 2019 film adaptation of Cats, Old Deuteronomy (who is male in the musical and the source material) is played by actress Judi Dench.
- There are far too many adaptations of A Christmas Carol with Ebenezer Scrooge replaced by a female with a similar backstory and attitude (but not necessarily the same age and attractiveness).
- Jaq the mouse from Cinderella becomes Jacqueline in Cinderella (2015).
- The Jerry Lewis movie Cinderfella, as the title implies, is a Gender Flip of Cinderella, with a male Cinderella (played by Lewis, of course), a Princess Charming, a fairy godfather played by Ed Wynn, and two stepbrothers (although the Wicked Stepmother remains female).
- Cocaine Bear: The bear in the movie is female, while the real bear was male.
- Color Out of Space (2020) changes the Gardners' middle son from the original short story into a daughter, Lavinia.
- A 1990s adaptation of Mickey Spillane's Come Die With Me made Mike Hammer's cop buddy Lt. Pat Chambers into Patricia Chambers.
- Jessica Chastain's character in Dark Phoenix is Vuk, a very obscure male alien who showed up back in The Avengers #4 during The '60s. However, as Vuk's form was stolen from a human woman she murdered, her original alien gender is unknown.
- In the American remake of Les Diaboliques, the male detective Finchet became Shirley Vogel, portrayed by Kathy Bates.
- Dolly Dearest: The film is basically a gender flip of Child's Play with a girl and a female doll.
- With its virtually identical Clear My Name plotline, one could consider the Ashley Judd vehicle Double Jeopardy to be a Gender Flip of The Fugitive. Both movies even feature Tommy Lee Jones as a lawman who first hunts for, then aids, the fugitive. We even get a misleading 911 call made by the victim though as the audience soon learns, this was deliberately done in order to ensure that the woman would be convicted, as well as the protagonist wailing, "I didn't kill my husband!", similar to Richard Kimble. Indeed, not only was the movie referred to as The Female Fugitive by several critics, people genuinely needed to be informed that it was NOT another sequel.
- Dune (2021) reimagines Liet Kynes, a white man in the novel and the 1984 film (where he was played by Max von Sydow), as a Black woman played by Sharon Duncan-Brewster.
- In the live-action adaptation of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, the male character of Major Anderson is played by Viola Davis. Interestingly, they were originally going to have Graff played by a woman (an idea that met with Card's approval), but then Harrison Ford got the part, so they gender flipped Anderson instead.
- Enola Holmes 2 applies this to Moriarty, who is in the film portrayed as a black woman played by Sharon Duncan-Brewster.
- The Hustle is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with conwomen preying on men instead of conmen preying on women. The tagline "Giving Dirty Rotten Men a Run for Their Money" acknowledges this.
- Evil Dead
- Conversely, Bruce Campbell in The Evil Dead (1981) plays what is essentially the Final Girl of the horror movie. It wasn't planned that way, however. The order in which characters died was actually determined by actor availability. If an actor left early in the shoot, his or her character also died early in the movie. Apparently Campbell was the one without a life, though that seems to have worked to his benefit in the long run.
- In the remake /Stealth Sequel, Ash's role is filled by an Expy named Mia.
- This was done in both adaptations of the Hercule Poirot story Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie:
- In the 1982 version, Emily Brewster becomes the flamboyant and effeminate Rex Brewster.
- In the 2001 version, the victim's teenaged stepdaughter Linda turns into a stepson Lionel.
- The film Eye in the Sky's protagonist Colonel Powell was originally written to be a male. It was changed to a female, played by Helen Mirren.
- Fright Night 2: New Blood is supposedly a sequel to the 2011 remake of the 1985 movie, but it's really just another remake with Jerry (renamed Gerri) as a female vampire. Oh, and it's set in Romania instead of the United States.
- In the original Ghostbusters (1984), the eponymous ghost-hunting team is made up of four men with a female secretary. In the 2016 remake, the team is all-female and their secretary is a man.
- The plot of Grease 2 is basically a flip of the first movie's plot. The guy is now the naïve, sweet one and the girl is the tough, experienced gang member.
- In the Harry Potter books, every player on the Slytherin Quidditch team either has a male first name or is referred to only by their surname. In the first film, however, their Keeper (Miles Bletchley in the book) is replaced by a girl.
- Zig-zagged with Hellraiser (2022). This film's version of Pinhead, the Priest, is portrayed by a woman for the first time, which flips the precedent for the films but is more accurate to The Hellbound Heart, as in the novella "Pinhead" was an ambiguously-gendered Cenobite whose only clue to their gender was a feminine voice.
- Double subverted in the short film High and Tight where the third Olsen sibling was first a boy called Seth - then changed to a girl called Serena. Then when the original actress dropped out and no replacements could be found in time, the character became a boy again.
- Head Over Heels (2001) is a gender-flipped romantic comedy version of Rear Window.
- The Howard Hawks classic newspaper comedy His Girl Friday is a gender-flipped version of the play The Front Page (which had already been made into an acclaimed movie once before). Hawks turned the "Hildy Johnson" character into a woman and made it a romantic comedy. Billy Wilder later remade it yet again with two male protagonists, and then an '80s remake called Switching Channels - set this time in the television news industry - put the romance aspect back.
- In a What Could Have Been example, when Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly was offered the chance to helm a film adaptation of Louis Sachar's Holes, his screenplay for the movie changed the female warden of Camp Green Lake (real name Lou Walker) to an unnamed man—among many, many other changes that left the story almost unrecognizable.
- The Made-for-TV Movie How to Marry a Billionaire is a Setting Update of How to Marry a Millionaire, except it's about three men looking for rich wives.
- The Jem and the Holograms (2015) movie sees Eric Raymond from Jem turned into a woman (Erica). She's also Rio's mother.
- In both Disney's 2016 live action adaptation of The Jungle Book (1967) and Warner Bros' 2018 live action adaptation of same, the giant snake Kaa is now a female. The major difference being that she's a villain in the 2016 work, a hero in the 2018 one.
- The film adaptation of Jurassic Park switched the roles of Hammond's grandchildren, making Lex (the girl) the older one and the computer genius. This was done in order to give Lex more characterization. In the original novel Tim was a Teen Genius that was both computer savvy and obsessed with dinosaurs, while Lex was just annoying.
- Gazelle was a man in The Secret Service, but a woman in Kingsman: The Secret Service.
- In the film adaptation of K-PAX, the novels' Dr. Klaus Villars — a white, bearded, German-accented, classically Freud-reminiscent psychiatrist — becomes Dr. Claudia Villars, a female Black-American played by Alfre Woodard.
- Jungle Cruise features a female version of the ride's shrunken head salesman Trader Sam as the native tribe's chieftain, briefly donning a tophat much like the Walt Disney World version of the character.
- Kiss of the Spider Woman: Molina was a transgender woman in the book, but is a cisgender man now.
- Lady and the Tramp (2019) changes Jock from male to female (her name becomes a nickname for Jacqueline), makes Jim Dear and Darling's baby a girl named Lulu instead of a boy, and changes the female Siamese cats into male Devon Rexes.
- Lantana, based on Speaking in Tongues, turns Valerie's patient Sarah Phelan into a gay male patient, Patrick Phelan.
- In Left Behind: Rise Of The Antichrist, which is loosely based on the second half of the first Left Behind book, investigative reporter Eric Miller becomes Erica Miller working for GWN.
- Legend of Eight Samurai has one of the eight half-brothers changed from a crossdressing male to a female portrayed by Sue Shiomi.
- In "Let the Right One In" the vampire Eli despite being assumed to be female was actually a boy who was castrated as a child. In the American adaption "Let Me In" the vampire Abby is definitely female, there's even a deleted scene which shows Abby a female when she was turned.
- Kenneth Branagh's 2000 film adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost changed Holofernes into Holofernia, played by Geraldine McEwan.
- Lust for Dracula which makes Dracula and Van Helsing both women, and into a Lesbian Vampire in the case of the former.
- The Patrick Dempsey film Made of Honor is clearly this of the Julia Roberts vehicle My Best Friend's Wedding, given their identical plots—person realizes that they're in love with their opposite-sex best friend just as said friend announces their engagement, is roped into being part of the bridal party and spends the ensuing time pulling numerous manipulative stunts to break up the relationship. In true Double Standard style, Julia Roberts character, a woman, is blasted for her behavior and does NOT get the guy, whereas Patrick Dempsey ends up married to the girl.
- In Maleficent Since Diaval becomes the iconic dragon, and not Maleficent, this would mean the dragon of this continuity is male.
- The original ABBA recording of "Does Your Mother Know?" was an older man singing to a barely (or possibly not quite) legal girl, whereas in Mamma Mia! it's flipped to a middle-aged woman singing to the very persistent and very young man who's pursuing her.
- In place of Jimmy Olsen at the Daily Planet is a young woman named Jenny in Man of Steel. However Jenny's last name is confirmed NOT to be Olsen, so there is room for a red headed male photographer in the sequel. If you pay attention, the movie shows her last name to be "Jurwich"... but one tie-in book makes it Olsen, so it's hard to say for sure.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Hawkeye's youngest child (adapted from the second volume of The Ultimates) is changed from a girl named Nicole to a boy named Nathaniel (after his "Auntie Nat". Lampshaded in-universe, as they mention that they were expecting a girl. His middle child is also changed from a boy named Lewis to a girl named Lila. The oldest child is not flipped, although he does get a name change from Callum to Cooper.
- In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Mainframe is a female android voiced by Miley Cyrus, despite being a male, futuristic counterpart of The Vision.
- In Ant-Man and the Wasp, Ghost goes from being a white man to a biracial woman.
- Captain Marvel:
- Captain Mar-Vell is a woman, played by Annette Bening. The character's human alter ego is consequently changed from "Walter Lawson" to "Wendy Lawson."
- Complicated example with the Kree Supreme Intelligence. In the comics, the Supreme Intelligence is basically a giant floating head, but has nonetheless often been referred to with male pronouns (or none at all), and has always been voiced by male actors whenever it showed up in TV shows and video games. In the film, however, the Supreme Intelligence takes on a form unique to whoever it is talking to, meaning that when it appears onscreen to commune with Carol Danvers, it looks like the aforementioned Mar-Vell and is once again played by Bening.
- In Eternals, the characters Makkari, Ajak and Sprite, all of whom are men in the original comics, are played by women. The three of them were brought Back from the Dead in the comics as woman to match their portrayals here.
- In Black Widow (2021), Taskmaster turns out to be a woman, with the character's real name changed from Anthony Masters to Antonia Dreykov.
- Cosmo the Spacedog is male in the comics, but her first speaking role in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special has her female. According to James Gunn, this was to make her more like the character's real-life inspiration Laika.
- Vanessa Redgrave's role in Mission: Impossible (1996) was originally written for a man.
- Jacob Portman's male psychiatrist Dr. Golan from Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is played by actress Allison Janney in the film adaptation, subverted in that like in the book Dr. Golan turns out to be the false identity of a male Wight.
- In the Joss Whedon film of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, one of the villain's lackeys, named Conrad, is female. The part has always been, in the past, a basic male role.
- In Muppet Treasure Island, Ben Gunn from Treasure Island is changed to Benjamina Gunn just so Miss Piggy can have a role to play.
- The remake of Overboard gender flips the two main characters from the original movie.
- The character Carin from Patch Adams is a female medical student who Patch has a romantic relationship with, was molested as a child and is eventually killed by a mentally ill patient. In reality, "she" was Hunter Adams' best male friend, who he did not have a romantic relationship with, and while he was killed under similar circumstances, it was much earlier than the film depicts. This was one of the many reasons the Real Life Hunter Adams has openly criticised the movie based on his life.
- Ran is a partial Gender Flip of King Lear, changing the gender of the daughters and Edmund.
- Rags is a gender flip of Cinderella, where Cinderella is now a boy named Charlie with a stepfather and stepbrothers, and the Prince is a female popstar named Kadee Worth.
- The film adaptation of The Relic saw Linda Hunt play the museum director Anne Cuthbert, a character who, in the original novel, was a man named Ian Cuthbert.
- In The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson is a woman, played by actress Bessie Nellis.
- Nearly every adaptation of The Ring changes the male protagonist into a female, and his baby daughter into a kid son. The only adaptation to keep the protagonist male is an obscure 1995 Japanese Made-for-TV Movie called Ring: Kanzenban.
- RoboCop (2014) sees Anne Lewis changed into an African-American man named Jack Lewis. Conversely, Chief Dean is a female version of Sgt. Reed.
- Most shadowcasts of The Rocky Horror Picture Show will let anyone, regardless of gender, audition for any part. ("Genderfuck" versions specifically gender flip all the roles.)
- Rough Night is the same premise as Very Bad Things with the genders reversed.
- The 2022 remake of 'Salem's Lot has Dr. Cody, a man in the original novel and prior adaptations, played by Alfre Woodard.
- The title character of Salt was originally named Edward and played by Tom Cruise, but he dropped out. When Angelina Jolie stepped in, the writers changed Ed to Evelyn and also decided to make Salt's spouse less of a Damsel in Distress.
- The film version of Sgt. Bilko turned Cpl Rocky Barbella into Cpl Raquelle Barbella. (Bilko's other sidekick, Cpl Henshaw, was given a Race Lift).
- Shin Kamen Rider (2023)'s take on Scorpion Man from the original 70s series is a beautiful woman called Sasori-AUG.
- The movie adaptation of Silent Hill replaced Harry Mason with Rose Dasilva. The idea was to play up the notion that a mother is even more attached to her child than a father, particularly if the child is a girl. Interestingly, the father was played by Sean Bean, who does look a bit like Harry Mason. In the sequel, Bean's character has taken the name Harry Mason, but still isn't the protagonist.
- In Sodom and Gomorrah, King Bera of Sodom from the Book of Genesis becomes Queen Bera of Sodom.
- Spotted in Son Of Man, an adaptation of the story of Jesus Christ that takes place in modern Africa. Several of the disciples are portrayed by women, with feminized versions of their original names to match.
- The character of Dizzy Flores in Starship Troopers was a man in the original Robert A. Heinlein novel. In the movie, he was switched to a she, given a much bigger role, and played by Dina Meyers. Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles followed the movie's lead. note
- The 1996 made-for-TV movie, The Stepford Husbands is, as its name suggests, The Stepford Wives with the gender roles reversed-this time it's the women seeking to make their husbands "perfect".
- The original screenplay for Streets of Fire had the role of McCoy, the hero's old army buddy, written as a male. Actress Amy Madigan, while auditioning for a different role, convinced the filmmakers to let her play McCoy as a tough, strong woman instead, without rewriting the part.
- The Suicide Squad makes the Ratcatcher, a middle-aged male in the comics, into a teenage girl. Downplayed in that the character is named Ratcatcher 2, implying she's the original male Ratcatcher's Canon Foreigner successor.
- In The Survivor, Hobbs (played by Jenny Agutter) was a man in James Herbert's original novel.
- The female lead of the 1982 Swamp Thing movie is a government agent named Alice Cable, based on Agent Matthew Cable from the original comics.
- In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), April's boss Burne Thompson is now an African-American woman named Bernadette Thompson, played by Whoopi Goldberg.
- In The Tempest (2010) directed by Julie Taymor, the character Prospero is changed to Prospera and played by Helen Mirren.
- Twilight Zone: The Movie: In "Kick the Can", the Sunnyvale Retirement Home administrator is Miss Cox. In the original episode, it is Mr. Cox.
- And it happened again during the production of Vantage Point (2008), where Sigourney Weaver played the also originally male TV producer Rex Brooks.
- In Warcraft (2016), Alodi, who's male in the game the film's based on, is female (or at least female-appearing).
- Wee Willie Winkie was based on a Rudyard Kipling short story in which the protagonist was a little boy. When the story was adapted for the screen, it became a Shirley Temple vehicle, and the main character became a girl.
- In the original novel version of Winter's Bone, protagonist Ree had two younger brothers. In the film version, one of them is a girl.
- In B-Movie series Witchcraft (possibly best known from Allison Pregler's reviews) a police officer named Lutz first appears as a man in the sixth film and is suddenly a woman in the seventh, with no explanation. The thirteenth and final film, in its valiant attempts to close all the series' Plot Holes, Ret Conned the two Lutzes into siblings.
