Universal Cable Productions has set four female directors to helm key pilots and new series for the studio — Steph Green, Ana Lily Amirpour, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, and Kari Skogland.
The hirings are significant, given continued industry trends toward underrepresentation for female directors. According to data from NBCUniversal research, of the 242 scripted pilots across broadcast, cable, and streaming that currently have directors attached, only 17% are women. For current series, the women make up 21% of all directors across television and streaming.
According to Ucp co-president Dawn Olmstead, the studio has long seen pilots as an area of focus for female inclusion at the director level.
“This wasn’t a place where we needed to start an initiative to open people’s minds to giving more of these pilot swings to female directors,” Olmstead said. “It was kind of in the ether already — which for someone like me was awesome, or else I...
The hirings are significant, given continued industry trends toward underrepresentation for female directors. According to data from NBCUniversal research, of the 242 scripted pilots across broadcast, cable, and streaming that currently have directors attached, only 17% are women. For current series, the women make up 21% of all directors across television and streaming.
According to Ucp co-president Dawn Olmstead, the studio has long seen pilots as an area of focus for female inclusion at the director level.
“This wasn’t a place where we needed to start an initiative to open people’s minds to giving more of these pilot swings to female directors,” Olmstead said. “It was kind of in the ether already — which for someone like me was awesome, or else I...
- 8/1/2018
- by Daniel Holloway
- Variety Film + TV
After leaving her mark on the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, host Michelle Wolf is taking a breather from the madness of the world in a new trailer for her Netflix variety/sketch show.
Streaming every Sunday beginning May 27, The Break With Michelle Wolf provides a respite from “the seriousness of today’s late night comedy,” per the official release.
Press Play above for a preview of what the Daily Show alumna has in store for viewers.
Ready for more of today’s newsy nuggets? Well…
* Netflix has set a sequel to its holiday movie A Christmas Prince, featuring returning...
Streaming every Sunday beginning May 27, The Break With Michelle Wolf provides a respite from “the seriousness of today’s late night comedy,” per the official release.
Press Play above for a preview of what the Daily Show alumna has in store for viewers.
Ready for more of today’s newsy nuggets? Well…
* Netflix has set a sequel to its holiday movie A Christmas Prince, featuring returning...
- 5/18/2018
- TVLine.com
Hulu has given a series order to The Act, a character-based seasonal true-crime anthology series from writers Nick Antosca (Channel Zero) and Michelle Dean and Universal Cable Productions, Deadline has learned.
Written by Dean and Antosca, The Act, which has been in development at Hulu since last year, is a seasonal anthology series that tells startling, stranger-than-fiction true crime stories. The first season is based on Dean’s 2016 Buzzfeed article “Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered.” It follows Gypsy Blanchard, a girl trying to escape the toxic relationship she has with her overprotective mother. Her quest for independence opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, one that ultimately leads to murder.
Antosca and Dean will executive produce and serve as co-showrunners. Greg Shephard and Britton Rizzio also executive produce. Universal Cable Productions, where Antosca is under an overall deal, is the studio.
Written by Dean and Antosca, The Act, which has been in development at Hulu since last year, is a seasonal anthology series that tells startling, stranger-than-fiction true crime stories. The first season is based on Dean’s 2016 Buzzfeed article “Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered.” It follows Gypsy Blanchard, a girl trying to escape the toxic relationship she has with her overprotective mother. Her quest for independence opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, one that ultimately leads to murder.
Antosca and Dean will executive produce and serve as co-showrunners. Greg Shephard and Britton Rizzio also executive produce. Universal Cable Productions, where Antosca is under an overall deal, is the studio.
- 5/18/2018
- by Denise Petski
- Deadline Film + TV
Hulu has ordered a second anthology to its roster of scripted originals.
The streamer best known for The Handmaid's Tale has handed out a series order to The Act, a season anthology series that explores startling, stranger-than-fiction, true-crime stories.
The first season will revolve around Gypsy Blanchard, a girl trying to escape the toxic relationship she has with her overprotective mother. Her quest for independence opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, one that ultimately leads to murder. It is based on Michelle Dean's BuzzFeed story "Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter to Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom ...
The streamer best known for The Handmaid's Tale has handed out a series order to The Act, a season anthology series that explores startling, stranger-than-fiction, true-crime stories.
The first season will revolve around Gypsy Blanchard, a girl trying to escape the toxic relationship she has with her overprotective mother. Her quest for independence opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, one that ultimately leads to murder. It is based on Michelle Dean's BuzzFeed story "Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter to Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom ...
- 5/18/2018
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Hulu has put in development The Act, a character-based true-crime anthology series from writers Nick Antosca (Channel Zero) and Michelle Dean. Each season of the anthology series will center on one particular case, with the first installment based on Dean's 2016 Buzzfeed article "Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered." It is the true story of single mom Dee Dee Blanchard who convinced everyone around her that her daughter, Gypsy, was…...
- 7/21/2017
- Deadline TV
There is no such thing as too much Jennifer Jason Leigh. After a high-profile turn in “Twin Peaks,” the beloved actress Leigh returns to television as a lead in a promising new Netflix series about a teenage boy on the autism spectrum. The show is called “Atypical,” and it handles its subject with humor and grace, as evidenced by a charming first trailer released today.
Read More‘Alias Grace’ Trailer: Netflix’s Period Murder Mystery Brings the Chill to 1840s Canada
Serving as an executive producer, Leigh looks to join contemporaries Mary Louise Parker and Toni Collette, who both received mid-career bumps from prestige television shows where they played unhinged mothers. (Parker on “Weeds,” and Collette with “United Sates of Tara”). The connection is also in the casting: “United States of Tara” actor Keir Gilchrist plays Sam, an 18-year-old on the autism spectrum who craves love and a “normal” life.
Read More‘Alias Grace’ Trailer: Netflix’s Period Murder Mystery Brings the Chill to 1840s Canada
Serving as an executive producer, Leigh looks to join contemporaries Mary Louise Parker and Toni Collette, who both received mid-career bumps from prestige television shows where they played unhinged mothers. (Parker on “Weeds,” and Collette with “United Sates of Tara”). The connection is also in the casting: “United States of Tara” actor Keir Gilchrist plays Sam, an 18-year-old on the autism spectrum who craves love and a “normal” life.
- 7/18/2017
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
In July 2016, Gypsy Rose Blanchard was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the brutal stabbing death (in Springfield, Missouri) of her mother, Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard. It seemed like a remarkably tidy ending for an almost surreally sensational crime.
Gypsy, then 24, was arguably the biggest victim of all, having essentially been held hostage by her late mother since she was a young child – a casualty of Munchausen by Proxy, a rare disorder in which a caregiver feigns or induces symptoms of sickness in her charge.
Gypsy, then 24, was arguably the biggest victim of all, having essentially been held hostage by her late mother since she was a young child – a casualty of Munchausen by Proxy, a rare disorder in which a caregiver feigns or induces symptoms of sickness in her charge.
- 5/15/2017
- Rollingstone.com
Loving is perhaps the least likely and most necessary film to accompany the conclusion of this year’s tumultuous U.S. presidential election: a drama that’s at once calm, even tranquil, and still a vital reminder of the possibility of progressive politics. The newest from writer-director Jeff Nichols (and his second this year, after Midnight Special) tells the story leading up to another momentous event in U.S. history, the landmark civil rights decision Loving v. Virginia, in 1967. But, as Alissa Wilkinson writes at Vox, it does so in a way unlike anything else we’ve seen in this election:It’s difficult, leading up to any election — and especially this one — to not see everything, including pop culture, through the lens of politics. But even by pre-election standards, Loving, about the couple at the center of the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage, would seem to be obviously political.
- 11/29/2016
- MUBI
In a competitive situation with multiple bidders, literary management company Writ Large has acquired film and TV rights to Michelle Dean’s Buzzfeed article about a Missouri murder case that grabbed national attention. The article “She Would Have Been the Perfect Mom For Someone That Was Actually Sick,” examined the bizarre 2015 case about Dee Dee Blanchard and her supposedly seriously ill daughter Gypsy Rose. Dee Dee Blanchard was found stabbed to death in her home after…...
- 10/7/2016
- Deadline TV
In a competitive situation with multiple bidders, literary management company Writ Large has acquired film and TV rights to Michelle Dean’s Buzzfeed article about a Missouri murder case that grabbed national attention. The article “She Would Have Been the Perfect Mom For Someone That Was Actually Sick,” examined the bizarre 2015 case about Dee Dee Blanchard and her supposedly seriously ill daughter Gypsy Rose. Dee Dee Blanchard was found stabbed to death in her home after…...
- 10/7/2016
- Deadline
It's male timidity not chauvinism that has let women down on screen. But Bridesmaids has liberated them at last
Plenty of people seem to think that Bridesmaids is "groundbreaking". There's less consensus about what ground is actually being broken.
For some, the film marks a breakthrough for feminism. A mainstream comedy written by women, in which women dominate the action and men are pushed to the margins, has wowed both the critics and the public. It's incontrovertibly funny, and that's to be considered no mere laughing matter.
The assertion that women have no sense of humour has long been seen as a patriarchal slight. So, the devastating female-delivered quips in Bridesmaids make the film "more feminist than Thelma and Louise" for Zoe Williams. Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams goes further. Bridesmaids, she assures us, is "your first black president of female-driven comedies".
Others, however, take the opposite view and brand the film a landmark in misogyny.
Plenty of people seem to think that Bridesmaids is "groundbreaking". There's less consensus about what ground is actually being broken.
For some, the film marks a breakthrough for feminism. A mainstream comedy written by women, in which women dominate the action and men are pushed to the margins, has wowed both the critics and the public. It's incontrovertibly funny, and that's to be considered no mere laughing matter.
The assertion that women have no sense of humour has long been seen as a patriarchal slight. So, the devastating female-delivered quips in Bridesmaids make the film "more feminist than Thelma and Louise" for Zoe Williams. Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams goes further. Bridesmaids, she assures us, is "your first black president of female-driven comedies".
Others, however, take the opposite view and brand the film a landmark in misogyny.
- 6/27/2011
- by David Cox
- The Guardian - Film News
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