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‘Star Wars’ Crew Members Going From ‘Boys Club’ To Its First Female Director?

By Tony Smejek
Published on: 08:37 PST, Dec 4, 2015

Positions of power in Star Wars movies among the crew members, namely writers and directors, have traditionally been men since the franchise’s humble beginnings. The Force Awakens has actress Daisey Ridley portraying a “powerful female character.” Not only that, the previous movies have Natalie Portman and Carrie Fisher in strong roles, as well. But, there has been the lack of a woman’s presence in the director’s chair or in the franchise’s writing, according to Coming Soon, making the Star Wars crew a “veritable boys club.”

However, there was some Star Wars involvement by Fisher who had partaken in “unfinished polish work” on The Phantom Menace while Empire Strikes Back’s Leigh Brackett did her screen writing for the fifth episode. Brackett passed away after the first draft of the movie, which was left unused for the final product, according to Coming Soon.

Now, there’s a situation that may alter the course of history with talks of bringing on board a female director. Adriana Alberghetti of the WME (William Morris Endeavor), according to Los Angeles Times, gave a statement regarding the lack of women helming movies. “How do we get more women behind the camera?” he asked, in regard to the issue.

When it comes to future Star Wars movies, as reported in The Los Angeles Times, Alberghetti “procured meetings” involving four female directors. Of the potential writers, three are women.

LA Times continued its report via a two-day summit addressing this very issue of a lack of women in the movie industry. This event was organized by the Women in Film and the Sundance Institute. Executive director of the latter aforementioned institute had her say when it came to her observations involving women in the movie industry.

“We were all seeing the same statistics year after year about how women were faring behind the camera,” said Keri Putnam, executive director of the Sundance Institute. “We said, we’ve got a lot of info here, and it’s time to take some steps. The idea was to learn about what’s worked in other fields.”

Although Star Wars‘ Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy had this to say as far as the initiative of women wanting to get involved. As far as she was concerned, she’s not received a phone call from a female wanting to write or direct. According to The Wrap, Kennedy believes that women need to really put their feelers out when desiring work in the “big budget” movie market.

“Until I waved the flag at the Fortune women’s conference recently, I had not had one single phone call from a woman telling me that she really, really wants to direct a ‘Star Wars’ movie. They need to be the ones picking up the phone and saying, ‘Hey, let me tell you what ‘Star Wars’ means to me and how much I could do with it.'”

Although the Star Wars franchise already has had its fill of spaces for writers and directors, Coming Soon also reported that female helmers and scribes won’t be possible until beyond the year 2019. The solo anthology Star Wars movie franchise has their spots taken, too, except for the Boba Fett anthology movie in which Fantastic Four’s Josh Trank departed from the opportunity in May, thus leaving a spot open. Simon Kinberg is screenwriting.

That being said, there have been strides made recently regarding what’s going on with women in Hollywood such as Black List’s Stephany Folsom, who is set to re-write Thor: Ragnorak, and Patty Jenkins taking on the Wonder Woman solo movie starring Gal Gadot. However, it does seem as though the big budget Star Wars movie series is thought to be the “gold standard” when comes to women in Hollywood being involved.

[Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images Entertainment]

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