They did it because Anya Taylor Joy is doing extremely well right now and has a good reputation and the creator probably wanted to do something different as he was happy with how the story in the previous films was told. Like I know it’s easy to sperg about this shit, I am guilty of it too, but sometimes it’s just not that deep or cynical all the time. There are endless movies coming out even now with male leads that are shit with shit stores, or mediocre slop. Appealing to the “woke crowd” takes more than a female lead, especially a white one, and they know that by now. The issue is Hollywood if full of true believers (ideologues) who will keep funding dogshit, but it’s not like that dogshit never makes money, cinemas/theatres dying, and the reliance on unoriginal ideas because they are too scared to make much without a built-in audience.