Television

Cathy Yan Will Direct “Paprika” Series

Yan: Picturehouse/ YouTube

Cathy Yan is up for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series at this year’s Emmy Awards for her TV directing debut, an episode of “Succession’s” third season, and now she’s lined up her next small screen project. The “Birds of Prey” helmer will direct and executive produce “Paprika,” a live-action series based on Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel of the same name, for Amazon Studios and Hivemind. Deadline broke the news.

“Paprika” is being described as a “character-driven sci-fi series with a mind-bending narrative centering around a technology that allows us to invade people’s dreams.” The 1993 book was previously adapted into a 2006 animated film.

Best known for Margot Robbie-starrer “Birds of Prey,” a “Suicide Squad” spinoff, Yan made her feature debut with 2018’s “Dead Pigs.” Her upcoming slate includes “The Freshening,” a sci-fi story that grapples with rising tensions about race and gender.

Asked about the film industry’s history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes, Yan told us, “This is an institutional problem that must go far beyond just placing more people of color behind and in front of screens. They actually have to be encouraged to do their work and pursue their visions throughout the process, and to have their careers supported with empathy,” she emphasized.

Yan continued, “I think we’re still at the tokenization stage of this change. We need to hire more women and people of color in positions of power/gatekeepers who actually get things made — not just writers and directors, but executives, studio heads, producers, etc. Systems need to be in place to ensure our rights are protected — and that workplace discrimination has an easy and protected way to be identified and eliminated. On screen, we need to create characters that are real, complicated human beings that are protagonists — and antiheroes — of their own story.”


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