Consider us pleasantly unsurprised. Jessica Chastain’s production company, Freckle Films, has hired a female president of production and development: former Weinstein Company and Miramax production exec Kelly Carmichael. Deadline broke the news. “In her new role she will oversee the New York-based production and development company’s original slate with a focus on nurturing and supporting female talent across all aspects of production,” the source writes.
Carmichael is the co-founder of indie film and TV production company 375 Pictures. Currently overseeing production on Benedict Cumberbatch-starrer “The Current War” and Bryan Cranston-starrer “Untouchables,” her previous producing credits include “My Week with Marilyn” and “The Nanny Diaries.” Carmichael most recently served as head of production at Ivanhoe Pictures.
Chastain is a long-time advocate of women in film, both on-screen and behind the scenes. She recently penned an essay on Hollywood’s wage gap, and has been very outspoken about the industry’s sexist attitudes. She launched Freckle Films in February 2016 in order to develop female-driven material. The “Miss Sloane” actress has gone public with her goal to work with a female filmmaker every year. “They’re not given the same opportunities, so if I have any influence in choosing a film or a script or finding a director, I’m absolutely going to make a difference,” she said. The two-time Oscar nominee also serves on the advisory committee of We Do It Together, a nonprofit production company dedicated to financing and producing media content that empowers women.
Deadline writes that Freckle Film’s launch “came with a first-look overhead deal with Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray’s Maven Pictures. Among the projects in the works from that partnership is ‘The Magician’s Lie’ by Greer Macallister, being adapted by ‘Mr. Holmes’ scribe Jeffrey Hatcher, about a renowned female illusionist who must clear her name when she’s accused of murder; and ‘Life And Other Near Death Experiences,’ based on the book by Camilla Pagan, being adapted by Laura Terruso (‘Hello My Name Is Doris’) with Patricia Riggen (‘The 33’) attached to direct. That one centers on a newly single woman, whose husband has come out of the closet, [when she] receives an aggressive cancer diagnosis and heads to the Caribbean in an attempt to rediscover herself.”
Other projects being developed at Freckle Films include an adaptation of Nancy Horan’s “Loving Frank,” a portrait of the doomed love affair between translator Mamah Borthwick Cheney and architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and a film inspired by the Black Mambas, an all-female anti-poaching unit in South Africa.
You can catch Chastain in Niki Caro’s “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” now in theaters. The drama is based on a true story and centers on zookeepers who saved hundreds of lives during the Holocaust.
