The Heat — which just opened with a fantastic $39.1 million weekend — is the first major-release movie from a Hollywood studio this summer with more women in leading roles than men. Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, Fast & Furious 6, The Hangover Part III, Now You See Me, After Earth, The Internship, The Purge, Man of Steel, This is the End, Monsters University, World War Z, and White House Down all are dominated with major male characters — and some have no significant female characters whatsoever.

This isn't exactly a new trend — movies in general and summer movies in particular have been dominated by men for years. But The Heat is just one of only two female-driven movies this summer with major releases (i.e. in 1,000 theaters or more) — the other is the coming-of-age sex comedy The To-Do List, out next month. It's a puzzling trend, especially considering that since 2008, movies like Sex and the City, Mamma Mia!, The Proposal, Julie & Julia, Salt, Bridesmaids, The Help, Brave, and now The Heat have all proven that audiences will in fact buy tickets for female-fronted films.

So what's the deal? The Heat director Paul Feig, for one, says he's "perplexed."

"I know that there are certain business models that float around that seem to say that men won't show up to see a woman in a movie but women will show up to see men in a movie," he says. "I also know that there's some business models that show that movies starring women don't export well, especially to places like Asia — and studios make so much money off of international now that maybe that's part of it. But for me, it just doesn't make any sense, because women are half the population of the world and they need entertainment. From a business level, it seems crazy to just completely under-serve that enormous of a market."

But are women actually being underserved? A BuzzFeed analysis of summer movie box office since 2008 makes clear that, on average, movies with male-dominated casts are grossing far more than movies where women make up the bulk of the main cast. And audiences are not flocking to female-driven films in the same volume on opening weekend as they do with male-driven films.

Virtually any way you measure it, women are coming up short at the summer box office, which leads to a thorny question: Are there fewer female-driven films because Hollywood is ignoring women, or because, on average, audiences are ignoring the female-driven films that are released?