“Equity” is coming to the small screen. Deadline reports that the film, released earlier this year, is being made into a drama series, “which has landed at ABC with a script commitment plus penalty.” The series is from writer Regina Corrado (“The Strain,” “Sons of Anarchy”) and producer Amy Pascal (“Ghostbusters”). “Breaking Bad’s” Anna Gunn starred in the Wall Street-set film.
Corrado developed the series for Sony TV’s TriStar Television. One of the studio’s current priorities is developing women-centric shows — it previously produced Amazon’s “Good Girls Revolt.” “It was TriStar TV head Suzanne Patmore-Gibbs who brought the project to [Amy Pascal’s] Sony-based Pascal Pictures,” Deadline writes.
In addition to writing, Corrado will executive produce the series with Pascal and Rachel O’Connor, as well as the movie’s producers Alysia Reiner (“Orange Is the New Black,” “Better Things”) and Sarah Megan Thomas. Reiner and Thomas also acted in the film.
Directed by Meera Menon (“Farah Goes Bang”) and written by Amy Fox (“Heights”), the film version of “Equity” centers on senior investment banker Naomi Bishop (Gunn). According to the film’s synopsis, when Naomi “is passed over for a promotion at her firm, she fights for the opportunity to take a start-up public, hoping this promising IPO will secure her a place at the firm’s highest level. But when an employee at the start-up raises questions about a possible crack in the company’s walls, Naomi must decide whether to investigate rumors that may compromise the deal, or push forward with the confidence her superiors expect.”
In an interview with Women and Hollywood, Menon said she wanted to make the movie because she had never encountered a character like Naomi or a story like “Equity” before. “Creating a portrait of a female point of view in an environment that we’ve pretty much exclusively understood through a male perspective — ‘Wall Street,’ ‘Wolf of Wall Street,’ ‘Arbitrage,’ etc. — was beyond exciting for me,” Menon explained. “It felt downright necessary.”
As Menon pointed out, there have been plenty of stories by and about men in the financial industry. “Equity” is distinctive because it centers on a woman in a male-dominated field and is from women in a male-dominated fields — writing, directing, and producing. It’s great to see that, like the film, the TV version of “Equity” has so many women in prominent positions behind the scenes.
