Having just wrapped production on the “Ghostbusters” reboot starring Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy, Amy Pascal has announced two more female-centric films: a journey of self-discovery involving the Greek goddess Athena and a screen adaptation of game developer and GamerGate target Zoe Quinn’s memoir.
Details are current scarce on “Athena.” The project will center on “a troubled young woman who is recruited by a covert agency and learns she is the descendant of the fabled goddess of wisdom and war,” per Deadline. The pitch was sold in the vicinity of the mid-six to seven figures. Pascal and Rachel O’Connor, both at the newly formed Pascal Pictures, will produce. In traditional Greek mythology, Athena is chaste but does give “virgin birth” to a son (hilariously) named Erechtheus.
Pascal Pictures also recently won a bidding war for the rights to “Crash Override: How To Save The Internet From Itself,” Quinn’s book about fighting against the misogynistic digital mob that is the GamerGate movement. The creator of the innovative, award-winning video game “Depression Quest,” Quinn had her life turned upside down when an ex-boyfriend dumped her personal information online and speculated that she had slept with journalists in the industry for favorable coverage of her game. “It is domestic abuse that went viral, and it was designed to go viral,” Quinn has said of that revenge post, which invited many more creeps to send her death and rape threats. The movie will focus on what it’s like to be an object of GamerGate’s hate — and what it’s like to fight back.
“Crash Override” will be published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster in September 2016. The adaptation is apparently generating a lot of interest, including from actress Scarlett Johansson. Described as a “very inside look at gaming and nerd culture and what happens when one gets caught in the gears of that machine,” it will be written by Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum and produced by Pascal and O’Connor. Sony will have the first opportunity to take on the film, but it is currently being funded by Pascal Pictures.
READ MORE: Amy Pascal’s Next Female Films: ‘Ghostbusters,’ ‘Cleopatra,’ Another ‘Little Women,’ ‘Barbie’
