By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Paul Feig Goes After Digital Content From Female, LGBTQ and Creators of Color

Posted Thursday, March 15th, 2018 - Comments Off on Paul Feig Goes After Digital Content From Female, LGBTQ and Creators of Color
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PAUL FEIG GOES DIGITAL TO CONTINUE TO CHAMPION NEW VOICES FROM UNDERSERVED/UNTAPPED VOICES 

Feig launches digital content company Powderkeg to be run by Laura Fischer

Filmmaker Paul Feig is launching a new company to create digital content that champions new voices with a special commitment to female, LGBTQ, and filmmakers of color. “It has long been a goal of mine to create an outlet for new and little-heard voices, both in front of and behind the camera. Entertainment needs to be fully representative of our entire population, and I am thrilled to have this outlet to help empower and bring exposure to as many distinct and varied new voices as possible.” Laura Fischer, previously Head of Production and development at Yahoo, will serve as CEO of Powderkeg. Independent from Feigco’s film deal at Fox and television deal at Lionsgate, Powderkeg will be home to scripted and unscripted series, as well as incubator programs, and is funded by Superbrand LLC, the private entertainment industry investment company of Adam Bold, co-founder of Grandma’s House Entertainment. CAA helped orchestrate the deal for Powderkeg and will represent the new company.

“I met Laura during the development and production process on our Yahoo series Other Space and was impressed with her great taste and passion for finding narratives from vastly untapped creative minds, which has always been an important part of our Feigco mission,” says Feig. “I can’t think of anyone better to lead this new venture.”

Adds Fischer, “Paul has long championed the irrepressible power of women in comedy and his eye for talent is unparalleled. I’m excited to bring Paul’s commitment to empowering diverse voices and their unique brand of comedy to the digital space. Now is the perfect moment in time to explore the surprising, authentic, and hilarious stories that have yet to be told.”

Laura Fischer spent seven years at Disney where she built the television group’s first Digital Studio that garnered three Emmy nominations and one Emmy.

Paul Feig is a multi-talented creator, working successfully as a filmmaker, writer, producer, and author whose films (Spy, The Heat, Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters) have grossed over one billion dollars worldwide.  His production company, Feigco Entertainment, run by Jessie Henderson was created with one goal – creating edgy, commercial comedies and original tentpole films starring women (the first and only company of its kind).  Feig’s most recent film was the critically acclaimed reboot of Ghostbusters, starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones. The film, beloved by audiences worldwide, won the Favorite Movie Award at the 2017 Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards. Up next, Feig has directed his first thriller, A Simple Favor, starring Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively and Henry Golding which comes out this Fall. Feigco is also producing the film Someone Great for Netflix, the TV show “Girls Code” for Freeform and executive producing “The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale” for Netflix.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon