Gender Equity Monday~!

(Jesse Grant/Getty Images)

​Famed Producer and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has come out with an initiative to move gender equity forward in film.  

Re-posted from Entertainment Weekly:

Star WarsPosted October 15 2015 — 1:20 PM EDT

Six directors have been announced for the next five Star Warsmovies, and although they range from industry veterans like J.J. Abrams to relative newcomers like Colin Trevorrow, they all have one thing in common: They’re all male. And that’s something Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy hopes to change soon.

RelatedColin Trevorrow weighs in on the lack of women directors making Hollywood blockbustersSpeaking at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summitthis week, Kennedy said that hiring qualified women is one of the Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm’s biggest priorities, both on screen and off.

“Six out of eight of the people in my story group are women and I’m sure there’s are a lot of people that would be surprised that we’re making Star Warsmovies and the majority of the people involved in the development of those stories are women.” Kennedy said. “It is going to happen. We are going to hire a woman who’s going to direct a Star Wars movie. I have no doubt.”

Abrams, Trevorrow, and Rian Johnson are set to direct the next three Star Wars movies, with Gareth Edwards directing the anthology story Rogue One and Phil Lord and Chris Miller helming the young Han Solo movie. A few weeks ago, Trevorrow weighed inon the dearth of female directors making blockbusters, suggesting that many female directors weren’t interested in big-budget stories.

Kennedy was careful to emphasize that it’s more complicated than simply anointing a female director, especially since she’s encountered more passion about the franchise from famous fanboys. “It’s not just a token job to look out and try to find a woman that we can put into a position of directing Star Wars,” she said. “And it is interesting because I have a huge number of men who call me constantly and tell me how much of a Star Wars fan they are and how much they want to get involved in anything to do with Star Wars; I don’t have a lot of women who call and have those conversations with me. …

If we do want to bring a woman in to direct a Star Wars … we don’t want to talk somebody into it.”

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