Lucasfilm Promises Female ‘Star Wars’ Director
DirectorsJ.J. Abrams(Star Trek),Rian Johnson(Looper),Phil LordandChris Miller(22 Jump Street),Colin Trevorrow(Jurassic World), andGareth Edwards(Godzilla) are all white dudes. All very talented white dudes, mind you, but they’re white dudes. This has caused a slight uproar amongstStar Warsfans, but Lucasfilm promises there will be a femaleStar Warsdirector. Read more after the jump.
We know two of the upcomingStar Warsfilmsstar women—Daisy Ridley(Mr Selfridge) andFelicity Jones(The Theory of Everything) — but, according to Lucasfilm President,Kathleen Kennedy, in an interview withFortune, her story group also mostly consists of women.
Fifty percent of our executive team are women. Six out of eight of the people in my Story Group are women. I think it’s making a huge difference in the kind of stories we’re trying to tell.
Kennedy insists they want to hire a femaleStar Warsdirector, it’s all about finding the right one.
It is going to happen. We are going to hire a woman who’s going to direct aStar Warsmovie. I have no doubt. On the other hand, I want to make sure we put someone in that position who’s set up for success. It’s not just a token job to look out and try to find a woman that we could put into a position of directingStar Wars… If we do want to bring a woman in to direct aStar Warsmovie, we want to make sure that it’s somebody who’s passionate and really, really wants to do aStar Warsmovie. We don’t want to talk somebody into it.
So far all theStar Warsdirectors have experience making movies that cost more than $30 million – which most female filmmakers don’t have the opportunity to make.
It is interesting because I have a huge number of men who call me constantly and tell me how much of aStar Warsfan they are and how much they want to get involved in anything to do withStar Wars. I don’t have a lot of women who call and have those conversations with me.
Colin Trevorrow causedsome controversywhen he made a statement similar to this one from Kennedy — that a lot of female filmmakers in the industry don’t have the desire to make movies that involve superheroes or lightsabers. That’s probably true forsomefemale filmmakers, just like it’s true for some male directors, but a lot? Doubtful. No shortage of female filmmakers right now are probably dying to get their chance to play on a canvas as large asStar Wars.
It is great to hear we’ll see a femaleStar Warsdirector at some point, but hopefully, that happens sooner than later.
