Looks like another major studio will be lacking in female representation this year. After Women and Hollywood reported that 20th Century Fox has zero female directors on their slate through 2018, and that over at Universal there will only be one out of 15 films directed by a woman, a similarly dismal stat has hit Disney.
According to a preview kit press release sent out by Disney detailed the eight films the studio will be releasing this year. The slate includes properties from Marvel, Pixar, and LucasFilm, as well as animation, a live-action adaptation of an old animated film, and a documentary. They are:
“Beauty and the Beast” — March 17
“Born in China” — April 21
“Guardians of the Galaxy 2” — May 5
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tails” — May 26
“Cars 3” — June 16
“Thor Rangarok” — November 3
“Coco” — November 22
“Star Wars Episode VIII” — December 15
Zero of these films have female writers or directors (Stephany Folsom gets a story credit on “Thor Rangorok,” but she’s not listed as one of its screenwriters), and, assuming “Star Wars Episode VIII” focuses on Daisy Ridley’s character Rey, two will feature female protagonists.
Reports like these are getting exhaustingly repetitive. If we’re not reporting on multitudinous inexperienced male directors being offered highly-lucrative, big-budget gigs, it’s that studios are repeatedly not even considering women for any of these gigs.
Disney is particularly disappointing when it comes to hiring women to direct. Just last month, producer Kathleen Kennedy came under fire for the lack of women directing in the Star Wars universe. Rather than giving a female director a shot at a big budget tentpole like one of the sequels — an opportunity many male directors have received — she said they were holding out for a woman with “experience.” This stance ignored the fact that men without experience are given gigs like this all the time, but for some reason women are subjected to the Catch-22 of having to get experience to have experience.
Examining the Disney release a bit more closely, it’s even more evident that the “experience” requirement doesn’t hold up for men working for the House of Mouse. “Cars 3” director Brian Fee is listed as a storyboard artist for “Cars” and “Cars 2.” “Pirates” co-directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s most high-profile project before this was two episodes of Netflix’s “Marco Polo.” Adrian Molina, another Pixar storyboarder, is both the writer and co-director on “Coco.” We’re not saying men shouldn’t be able to work up the ranks and transfer from one aspect of filmmaking to another. But when zero women are given the same opportunity, it’s a big problem. Where are the female Disney storyboarders who have been given directing gigs?
Disney needs to take action now, to both catch up with the times and make up for the fact that they have a dismal track record already. In their animation arm, Brenda Chapman co-directed “Brave,” Jennifer Lee co-directed “Frozen.” In the live-action world, Niki Caro has directed “McFarland, USA” for them and Mira Nair helmed 2016’s “Queen of Katwe” for the studio.
A few female-directed projects are coming up, including Meg LeFauve (writer for “Inside Out,” “The Good Dinosaur,” and “Captain Marvel” with Nicole Perlman) is co-directing the upcoming “Gigantic” (once again with a male collaborator, Ava DuVernay is directing the $100+ million “A Wrinkle in Time,” and the studio says they plan on hiring a women to helm “Captain Marvel” as well.
So thankfully, Disney’s 2018 release won’t bare the same issue, and this had better be the last year where we see zero women writers or directors on Disney’s slate.
