diversityinfilmtv

[diversityinfilmtv]

But, for now, there are some discernible gains for women in the TV industry. Vulture compiled data on the number of women and people of color who have directed TV pilots for the past five years. This year, 19 women are directing 24 out of 75 pilots across the five broadcast networks; by comparison, last year, women directed six of 70 pilots. Of the 19 female directors this year, three are black and three are Latina, as compared to 2017, when all six women who directed pilots were white. Between 2013 and 2016, women directed 42 pilots out of 348 — three were black and the rest were white.

#2018 pilot season #2018 pilots #tv #tv pilots #infographics

[diversityinfilmtv]

"It was a big risk. We had to make a bunch of changes. So it's gratifying to see that their recognition tells us that we made the right decision," said co-producer Frederic Bohbot.

Rajo, who plays protagonist Hakeem, won the award for Best Actor in a Leading Role on Sunday night.

Degrassi actor Jahmil French, who plays Hakeem's best friend A-Mac, is competing alongside Ethan Hawke for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

Meanwhile Olunike Adeliyi of Flashpoint and Workin' Moms, is up for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her work as Hakeem's mother.

#boost #film #Canadian screen awards #black actors #nabil rajo

[diversityinfilmtv]

Black Panther continues to destroy the box office and boast the most diverse audience for any film, superhero and otherwise.

The movie continued to play to an ethnically diverse audience. Caucasians made up a bigger share of ticket buyers this time out, or 37 percent, compared to 35 percent on opening weekend, while the African-American share went from 37 percent to 33 percent according to comScore/Screen Engine. Hispanics remain unchanged at 18 percent, followed by Asians (7 percent) and Native Americans/Other (5 percent). No other marquee superhero tentpole has played to such a diverse audience.

#black panther #Marvel Studios #ryan coogler #chadwick boseman #lupita nyong'o #diversity

[diversityinfilmtv]

In the email, which went viral, the producer questioned the decision to cast Denzel Washington as the lead in “The Equalizer”:

“I believe that the international motion-picture audience is racist – in general, pictures with an African-American lead don’t play well overseas… But Sony sometimes seems to disregard that a picture must work well internationally to both maximize returns and reduce risk, especially pictures with decent-size budgets.”

Must Read:Hollywood and International Audiences:  https://diversityinfilmtv.tumblr.com/post/159272953146/hollywood-and-international-audiences-recently

See also: Why aren’t Hollywood films more diverse? The international box office might be to blame:    http://theconversation.com/why-arent-hollywood-films-more-diverse-the-international-box-office-might-be-to-blame-86905

#black panther #asia pacific #marvel #diversity

[diversityinfilmtv]

Brown Girl Begins is an afrofuturist feature film (based on Nalo Hopkinson’s book, Brown Girl In The Ring) about a young black woman who is trapped in a world forced upon her. Ti-Jeanne, a reluctant priestess, must resurrect Caribbean spirits and survive the possession ritual that killed her mother, or her people will die.

#Brown Girl Begins #brown girl in the ring #nalo hopkinson #science fiction #fantasy #caribbean

[diversityinfilmtv]

Disney has been slammed after bosses admitted browning up its white extras during filming of Aladdin.

The eagerly anticipated live action production, which stars US actor Will Smith as Genie, is currently being filmed by director Guy Ritchie at Longcross studios in Surrey.  

But despite production taking place under 30 miles from London, a city with a community of over one million Asian people, Disney said it was forced to bring in white actors to fill background roles.

#fury disney browns white actors star aladdin #Aladdin #Disney #will smith

[diversityinfilmtv]

A lot of “Star Wars” fans who are specifically Asian never had a character they could dress up like, or they would and people would always call them “Asian Rey” or “Asian fill-in-the-blank.” I get very emotional when I see people who are able to identify with this character. That means a lot to me and I don’t think it will ever get old.

It feels like a big deal because it’s so rare, I wish it wasn’t. I wish that you and I could be having a different conversation. I wish that all different types of people of all races and all upbringings were all equally represented in this industry that influences so many people. But the fact is that’s just not true, so it is important to talk about it. I’m always thinking about that little girl that never saw herself in things.

#kelly marie tran #star wars #star wars the last jedi #asian #variety

[diversityinfilmtv]

Altered Carbon

 Months after Ghost in the Shell, we’re here again. @entertainmentweekly has the first look at the Netflix series, Altered Carbon, starring Joel Kinnaman. 

The story follows an elite soldier named Takeshi Kovacs. This is him below during a flashback scene (where he’s initially played by Will Yun Lee) along with his sister Reileen Kawahara (Dichen Lachman). They were killers for hire who became revolutionaries…

When Kinnaman was announced as the lead, many, including @diversityinfilmtv​ noted this was another example of Hollywood stripping Asians of their cultural properties while shunning Asians. The defense of the series is that Kovacs occupies the body of a white male, so casting a white male was justified. 

Those sticking to this talking point fail to recognize that this is not a foolproof defense. Consider the Ryan Reynolds’ vehicle, RIPD, 2013, wherein Reynolds portrays a white police officer (Nick) who dies and returns to earth in the body of an old Asian man (James Hong). Throughout the film, Reynolds is the POV character, not Hong, who appears a handful of times to remind the viewer of what Nick looks like to people he meets.

Altered Carbon, like Ghost in the Shell, is tone deaf to its own whitewashing when it argues that it should be viewed as a commentary on race and racism. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how much of Kovacs’ original life is revealed to the viewer, and whether his Asian body is really simply just a throwaway.

See also: Asian Consciousness, White Body

#altered carbon #joel kinnaman #netflix #dichen lachman #Ghost in a Shell #whitewashing #Asian Representation #Ghost In The Shell

[diversityinfilmtv]

#Kweli #kwelitv #black film #african diaspora #films

[diversityinfilmtv]

Disney has found its Mulan. 30-year-old Chinese actress, Liu Yifei aka Crystal Liu has been cast as the heroine in the live-action version of the 1998 Disney animated film of the same name. 

The casting comes amidst concerns of whitewashing, chiefly regarding Mulan’s love interest, Li Shang--who has yet to be cast--and speculation that Disney was having trouble finding actors for the main roles. Liu was among a reported 1,000 actresses who auditioned for the role, across four continents.

The actress is best known for her role in the Jackie Chan, Jet Li 2010 film, The Forbidden Kingdom.

#film #china #race issues #asia pacific #culture #Mulan #Disney

[diversityinfilmtv]

The Gilded Years

Zendaya Coleman to star as Anita Hemmings, the first black female student at Vassar College. The film will be titled, A White Lie. It will be co-produced by Zendaya along with Hello, Sunshine Productions, the Reese Witherspoon owned production company. 

So far, production details are far and few.

The film is based on the book, The Gilded Years by Karin Tanabe.

 Hemmings was the first black woman to graduate from Vassar College in 1897. The school was not aware of her race until graduation, as Hemmings, along with her husband, passed for white.

#zendaya #reese witherspoon #anita hemmings #black history month

[diversityinfilmtv]

In this week’s cover story, EW dives into the making of the film, from Kwan’s first meetings with eager producers to Chu’s ambitious mission to cast responsibly, and finally, to filming on location amid the splendor of Singapore and Malaysia. The author and director weren’t the only ones with stories to share of the book’s move from the page to the screen; Wu, Golding, Yeoh, and fellow cast members Gemma Chan, Sonoya Mizuno, Awkwafina, and Ken Jeong also reflect on what it was like to not be the only Asian face on set. 

#crazy rich asians #constance wu #henry golding #entertainment weekly #Asian Representation

[diversityinfilmtv]

Set in a modern-day London of economic and political uncertainty, the story follows the intersecting themes of familial honor, moral duty and dynastic corruption. Jim Wilson (Under the Skin, Attack the Block, You Were Never Really There) will produce. Netflix will finance and distribute.

#hamlet #riz ahmed #netflix #the night of

[diversityinfilmtv]

This South African film is flipping the spaghetti western on its headBy subverting the genre, Five Fingers for Marseilles is telling a distinctly contemporary story.

The elevator pitch for Five Fingers for Marseilles is simple enough: a South African spaghetti western.

But the film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September, is so much more and that, with TIFF even calling itone of the "best westerns of the year." Five Fingers may use some well-worn Western tropes — such as the stranger coming to town or the gathering of a team to fight a much larger opponent — but its strength is in how it subverts the genre to tell a wholly original story. In this case, Five Fingers works as an allegory about life in South Africa during and post-apartheid, revealing how much things can change while also remaining the same.

#south africa #film #african film

[diversityinfilmtv]

Daniel Dae Kim, who recently left CBS’ Hawaii Five-0, is in negotiations to join the cast of Lionsgate and Millennium’s Hellboy reboot.

Kim will step into the role left vacant by Ed Skrein after an outcry over whitewashing a Asian-American character.

Kim will play Major Ben Daimio, a rugged military member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense who, due to a supernatural encounter, can turn into a jaguar when angered or in pain. The character is Japanese-American in the Hellboy comics by creator Mike Mignol.

#daniel dae kim #ed skrein #hellyboy #whitewashing

[diversityinfilmtv]

“Mudbound” also arrives at a fraught time for the country, as white nationalists and the Ku Klux Klan take to the streets, emboldened by Donald Trump. Rees spent the day before her film’s Sundance premiere in Washington, D.C., protesting at the inauguration. “Everybody was worried that I wasn’t going to make it to the premiere,” she says. “It was really profound to be doing that one day and then be doing this film the next day. One’s kind of the short-term push, and the film is the long-term push,” she says.

“Mudbound” was a different movie when it first came to Rees in 2015. An early draft of the script by Virgil Williams, based on a novel by Hillary Jordan, focused more on the McAllan family — a father, Pappy (eventually played by Jonathan Banks), who lives with his two sons (Clarke and Hedlund) and his daughter-in-law (Mulligan). The Jackson family, who are their black neighbors (Blige, Rob Morgan and Mitchell), weren’t as fleshed out. “That just felt a little sweet for the kind of story I wanted to tell,” Rees says about rewriting the script. “I wanted to activate it, really make this a story about two families that are clawing their way upwards.”

#dee rees #carey mulligan #mary j blige #mudhound #Pariah

[diversityinfilmtv]

For Monica Owusu-Breen, executive producer and show runner of “Midnight, Texas,” which airs on NBC, that theme feels familiar. “I’ve never walked into a room and felt completely like I fit in,” she told NBC News. “There’s not very many half-Spanish, half Ghanaian women in the world, so I get this idea of feeling different and finding your tribe, finding the people who, whether or not you’re exactly the same, you get one another.”

When we first started, I chose to take out Owusu from my middle name, just so no one made assumptions about anything,” she said, wanting people to read her work and then decide. “Now you know my writing,” she said, "and you’re not going to not give me a job if I use Owusu.”

Owusu-Breen, who is married with two sons, 19 and 12 years old, said she has recently started mentoring young writers. “I want to encourage those kids who don’t think this is a real career – this is a real career as much as anything else is.”

“The one great thing about being a writer, especially when you feel like you don’t fit in or feel that you look different or are different is, you don’t have to talk — the words do it for you.”

#midnight texas #monica owusu breen #black women