With the release of “The Divergent Series: Insurgent” over the weekend, women have delivered the three biggest live-action openings of the year. The audience for “Insurgent,” which took in an estimated $54 million from Friday to Sunday, was 60 percent female. The opening-weekend crowd for “Fifty Shades of Grey” was 67 percent female, and women made up 66 percent of the audience for “Cinderella.”

It would be easier to dismiss those percentages as a fluke — three big female-oriented movies just happened to arrive in proximity — if a parade of movies aimed at young men had not bombed over the same period. Among the carnage: “Jupiter Ascending,” “Seventh Son,” “Hot Tub Time Machine 2,” “Chappie” and, over the weekend, Sean Penn’s “The Gunman.”

The shift has been noticeable enough to prompt movie executives and producers to ruminate about the causes and consider whether the big film factories should recalibrate their assembly lines. Counting on the stability of young men, studios have nearly 30 superhero movies on the way by the end of 2015, each costing well over $100 million to make. But young men are more easily distracted by other forms of entertainment, and women may now be the more reliable opening-weekend audience.