Women and Hollywood is off this week. Please enjoy one of our top posts of the year. This piece is from November 23, 2016.

“Star Wars” producer Kathleen Kennedy sounds determined to get a female director on board for a movie in the “Star Wars” franchise, but she seems to be going about it the wrong way. Rather than giving a female director a shot at a big budget tentpole like one of the “Star Wars” sequels — an opportunity many male directors have received — she’s holding out for a woman with “experience.”

In a story for Variety, Kennedy said that finding a female director for the franchise was a priority, but she seems to be putting requirements on women that don’t exist for men. “We want to make sure that when we bring a female director in to do ‘Star Wars,’ they’re set up for success,” she said. “They’re gigantic films, and you can’t come into them with essentially no experience.”

Basically, Kennedy wants to groom an up-and-coming female director for the gig. But this sentiment completely ignores the fact that plenty of male directors are given the chance to direct big budget films without such grooming, or are fresh off of helming smaller indies. There’s “Star Wars Episode 9” director Colin Trevorrow, who got the $150 million “Jurassic World” gig after making “Safety Not Guaranteed” for $750,000. Gareth Edwards was offered the $160 million “Godzilla” after he made “Monsters” with a budget of $500,000. Or Marc Webb of “The Amazing Spiderman” who made that $230 million film after the $7.5 million “500 Days of (Summer).” Sure, “Chronicle” director Josh Trank may have tanked “The Fantastic Four,” his first tent-pole, but we bet he won’t stay in “movie jail” as long as, say, Karyn Kusama.

There’s also precedent for male directors with zero experience getting hired for big directing gigs. Take for example when Paramount hired screenwriter Roberto Orci, a man with no directing experience, to direct “Star Trek Beyond.” (Justin Lin eventually took over the gig.) And that time that Seth Grahame-Smith, writer of the books “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” and “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” was given the gig of directing the big- screen adaptation of “The Flash.” (He too eventually gave up the gig.)

The fact is, more often than not, male directors are given these huge projects over more experienced female directors for no other reason than their gender. While first-time male directors like Robert Stromberg (“Maleficent”), Wally Pfister (“Transcendence”), and Andy Serkis (“The Jungle Book”) no doubt had extensive on-set experience, the fact remains that there are women directors out there who aren’t getting those kinds of breaks, and there are definitely no women DPs, Mo-Cap actors, visual effects directors, or screenwriters getting those big breaks either.

As we’ve written before, studios have no problem hiring men with no experience or promoting men from low budget films to the big leagues. It’s not about risk: It’s about gender. This is about male privilege and the belief that untested men can handle films better than women with experience.

As Variety writes, “Kennedy says that because there haven’t been many opportunities for women to direct big movies, the Lucasfilm team is trying to identify talented helmers at the early stages of their careers. ‘We want to really start to focus in on people we would love to work with and see what kinds of things they’re doing to progress up that ladder now, and then pull them in when the time is right.’”

The time is right right now, Kathleen Kennedy. It’s really a shame that women are being held up to a different standard than male directors.

We think Kennedy should take a cue from the story of Patty Jenkins, who is directed “Wonder Woman.” She spent many years directing TV after her debut “Monster,” Another good example is filmmaker Emily Carmichael, who will write and direct “Powerhouse,” for Amblin Entertainment.

It’s not helpful to perpetuate the stereotypes that women can’t helm tentpoles, or big budget action films heavy with special effects. “Grooming” a female director for a few years before giving them a job is incredibly patronizing and it’s treating women directors differently, when really, what they want are the same shots that male directors get.