Speaking at the Screen Film Summit, Screen Daily reports, “The Night Manager” director Susanne Bier dove into the perceptions of female directors in Hollywood.
One of the biggest topics she touched on was the fact that TV is currently offering her more opportunities than the film world, a sentiment echoed by many female directors.
“In recent years, some of the strongest manifestations of singular [auteur] visions have been in television,” she said. “At higher budgets, TV has shown less tolerance for the predictable and the generic which is so evident in the summer movie calendar. [‘The Night Manager’] as a film would have competed with James Bond or Jason Bourne, but as a television program it was up against an endless list of instantly accessible high quality titles: ‘House Of Cards,’ ‘Better Call Saul,’ ‘Westworld,’ ‘The Crown.’ The market logic of big budget television dictates that producers are required to think more adventurously and take more risks.”
Bier added that there are still a ton of misconceptions about what women can or cannot direct, but in the TV world, it’s less of an issue.
“Television is a popular art form that is truly global. There’s less space for the conventional, predictable assumptions of film production that dictate that, as a female director, I can only do romantic dramas and comedies,” she added. But, she said, TV is “is not a feminist utopia” and emphasized that “the entire entertainment industry has much work to do to reflect the diversity of its audience. There’s still something threatening about a female vision when it strays beyond the ‘woman’s picture’,” she said. “The industry is in desperate need of new perspectives.”
Earlier in the summer, The Guardian reported that sources close to the James Bond franchise confirmed that “Bier is among a ‘handful’ of names making up producer Barbara Broccoli’s shortlist to inherit the directing gig from [Sam] Mendes.”
Having the next Bond film directed by a woman would be a huge advancement for women in the industry, especially since the franchise is considered so much of a dudes club. And it would help break down those preconceived notions that Bier is talking about when it comes to what kinds of things women can and want to direct. When she was asked about the possibility at the event, she didn’t have a definitive answer, but said that taking on a Bond movie “would be a lot of fun.”
