The 2018-19 pilot season has been a marked improvement over 2017-18. Last year only one drama pilot was directed by a woman and it wasn’t ordered to series. This year 14 drama pilots are women-helmed and eight (57 percent) are going to series. As Deadline reports, 13 of the 28 (46 percent) men-directed pilots have been picked up, which means female directors have a better pilot-to-series ratio overall. (Of course, women were only hired to direct 33 percent of this season’s drama pilots, but that’s a hell of an increase from 2 percent.)
The ordered pilots and their directors are: law drama “The Fix” from former prosecutor Marcia Clark (Larysa Kondracki); police dramedy “The Rookie” (Liz Friedlander); “Red Line,” which follows the aftermath of a white cop fatally shooting a black doctor (Victoria Mahoney); “Proven Innocent,” a procedural that sees a law team working to overturn wrongful convictions (Patricia Riggen); hospital drama “New Amsterdam” (Kate Dennis); “The InBetween,” centering on a medium (Charlotte Sieling); “The Village,” which traces the intersecting lives of the residents of a Manhattan apartment building (Minkie Spiro); and “Roswell” reboot “Roswell, New Mexico” (Julie Plec). Friedlander is the only director who had previously helmed a broadcast pilot.
As the source points out, drama pilots are coveted jobs for directors, and are fairly hard to come by. Networks and studios set very high standards for the projects, which often cost “$7 million-$8 million and sometimes as much as $15 million.” Deadline adds that, as a rule, “networks have been very conservative, handing jobs to either a big feature helmer or a veteran TV pilot director with a proven track record.” Perhaps the impressive pilot-to-series ratio for female directors this season — many of whom are new to broadcast TV — will help convince execs that women are more than up to taking the lead on pilots.
Deadline credits initiatives boosting women directors — including NBC’s Female Forward and Ryan Murphy’s Half– as well as series that are exclusively women-helmed (“Queen Sugar,” “Harlots”) with the increase in pilots from women this season. The source also points to the success of Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman,” which underlined the current demand for female-driven stories told by women, and other recent milestones for women directors, including Ava DuVernay becoming the first black woman to direct a $100 million film with “A Wrinkle in Time” and “Star Wars: Episode IX’s” Mahoney becoming the first black woman director in “Star Wars” history. Of course, it’s likely that the power of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements also have something to do with the rising number of women pilot directors.
Whatever the reason(s), the success of women-helmed drama pilots is encouraging, and will hopefully serve as evidence to further convince networks that women should be considered — and hired — for these high-profile gigs.
