LOS ANGELES — Hollywood has long known that women are better customers than men. It’s right there in the annual reports from the Motion Picture Association of America: Moviegoing in the United States and Canada was 52 percent female last year. Just as it was five years earlier.

So why are studios only now pumping out female-focused megamovies?

Over the past year, “Gravity,” “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” “Frozen” and “Maleficent” have taken in a combined $3.6 billion worldwide, according to the database Box Office Mojo. Coming up, Warner Bros. is finally taking a flier on Wonder Woman, and Columbia Pictures is hot on an all-female remake of “Ghostbusters.” Disney has enormous hopes for a live-action “Cinderella,” arriving March 13.

Lionsgate, meanwhile, has decided to turn its fledgling “Divergent” series, which stars Shailene Woodley, into at least four films. More modest coming examples of female-aimed movies include the male stripper sequel “Magic Mike 2,” the musical comedy “Pitch Perfect 2,” an action extravaganza called “Expendabelles” and the bondage romance “Fifty Shades of Grey.” (One notable outlier: Marvel has not yet responded to fan clamor for a movie anchored by a female protagonist.)

All of this estrogen is not rolling through Hollywood because there are more women than ever in senior studio jobs, even though there are. And studios are not spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make event movies with female protagonists because cries of neglect have finally soaked in. “I wish that was the case,” said Catherine Paura, the movie industry market researcher. “I’ve been pointing to the potency of the female moviegoer since the 1980s.”