“There’s nothing we’d like more than to find a female director for Star Wars,” Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy told the Guardian earlier this year — a curious statement, since the company has had five chances to pick a director for a new Star Wars movie (remember, Josh Trank left Rogue One) and has come up with dudes each time. But now, the L.A. Times reports, the company may be moving beyond lip service: In the wake of the secret Hollywood meeting to address gender bias, WME super-agent Adriana Alberghetti tells the paper she set up meetings for four female directors and three female writers for jobs on the infinite parade of future Star Wars films. There’s no word on who these women were, but Indiewire notes that Alberghetti represents directors Sarah Gavron (Suffragette) and S.J. Clarkson (Jessica Jones, OITNB), and writers like Linda Woolverton (The Lion King) and Marti Noxon (unREAL). And if those names don’t work out, well, we’ve got 99 more women.
Another Times story this week points out that the onscreen future of the franchise may be more women-heavy as well. (Stop now if you don’t want minor Force Awakens spoilers.) Kennedy says that Gwendoline Christie’s Captain Phasma, the film franchise’s first female villain, will have a greater role to play in subsequent films in the new trilogy: “She’s an important character, a baddie in the best sense of the word.” If that’s any indication, at the very least, future editions of this video will be way longer.
