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    JJ Abrams' Bad Robot introduces diversity quota

    The film-maker’s production company to implement a new policy, created in the wake of #OscarsSoWhite
    ‘The Oscars controversy was a wake-up call’ ... JJ Abrams at the 2016 Academy Awards.
    ‘The Oscars controversy was a wake-up call’ ... JJ Abrams at the 2016 Academy Awards. Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
    Star Wars: The Force Awakens made waves with the casting of John Boyega and Daisy Ridley, a young black man and white woman, as the lead figures in the biggest Hollywood blockbuster of 2015. Now JJ Abrams has signalled his ongoing efforts to help improve Hollywood diversity after instituting a new policy to ensure people of colour and women always make the final shortlists for openings at his production company Bad Robot.
    Abrams told the Hollywood Reporter he made the move in the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, which overshadowed this year’s ceremony after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science failed to nominate a single actor of colour for the second successive year.
    “We’ve been working to improve our internal hiring practices for a while, but the Oscars controversy was a wake-up call to examine our role in expanding opportunities internally at Bad Robot and externally with our content and partners,” said Abrams. “We’re working to find a rich pool of representative, kick-ass talent and give them the opportunity they deserve and we can all benefit from. It’s good for audiences and it’s good for the bottom line.”
    Daisy Ridley and John Boyega in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
    Leading the way … Daisy Ridley and John Boyega in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Photograph: Allstar/Disney/Lucasfilm
    Bad Robot will reportedly work with its agency partner CAA and studios Warner Bros and Paramount to ensure women and minorities are submitted for writing, directing and acting jobs for the company in direct proportion to their representation among the US population. The policy has been in place since the end of January, two weeks after the #OscarsSoWhite controversy broke following the announcement of this year’s Academy Awards nominees.
    Abrams’s firm continues to be involved with the ongoing Star Wars trilogy, though the film-maker has handed directing duties to Rian Johnson on the upcoming Episode VIII, and is a key player in the Star Trek film series. Bad Robot also currently oversees the television series Person of Interest and 11.22.63, as well as the upcoming sci-fi thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane, a sequel of sorts to the Abrams-produced Cloverfield.
    Details of the production company’s quota system emerged during a period in which Hollywood appears to be scrambling to learn lessons from the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Newly announced movies with diversity at the fore include the Barack Obama biopic Barry and Dr Q, the true life tale of an illegal immigrant who became the head of brain tumour surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The latter is moving into production under Brad Pitt’s company, Plan B, and studio Disney.
    Meanwhile, Mexican-Kenyan Oscar-winner and Abrams alumnus Lupita Nyong’o will headline the science fiction drama Intelligent Life for Selma director Ava DuVernay, with the acclaimed African-American film-maker also set to take charge of Disney children’s fantasy A Wrinkle in Time. Black actors are also increasingly being cast with colour-blind attitudes in mind: Britain’s Idris Elba is in talks to replace Charlie Hunnam as the lead in romantic drama The Mountain Between Us, while Creed’s Michael B Jordan is set to take the Steve McQueen/Pierce Brosnan role in a new remake of spy thriller The Thomas Crown Affair.
    Movies lined up to offer diverse casts and themes for the 2017 Oscars include the Sundance slavery drama Birth of a Nation, Amma Asante’s interracial romance A United Kingdom and Mira Nair’s Uganda chess prodigy drama Queen of Katwe.

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    • 0 1
      A lot of people don't seem to know how Hollywood works. Multiple actors/actresses have come out and said how the opportunities for women and minorities is lower than for straight, white men. Hell, George Clooney just said in his article here how, when trying to make a film, he's given a list of choices to choose from. Want to guess how many of them are minorities? That's why JJ is doing this. It doesn't guarantee that you'll get the gig (still have to be good) but it WILL help ensure you at least get the opportunity. That's the point.
      Reply |
    • 2 3
      fucking hell, do people not learn that you can't force these things?
      Tokenism at its worst.
      Add that to the worst Star Wars film yet with the least magnetic, most PC "lead" characters
      Reply |
      • 0 1
        Can you imagine getting on that shortlist how patronising it would be that you were there just because you were black or a woman?
        the intentions might be right, but positive discrimination has the complete opposite effect I reckon - its disempowering and makes people expect to be pandered to because of their 'diversity'. a faddish expression if ever there was one
        Reply |
    • 1 2
      Have they got a fat Scottish bloke yet ?
      Reply |
    • 2 3
      after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science failed to nominate a single actor of colour for the second successive year.

      If they didn't have a quota for actors of color, what did they fail at.
      Reply |
    • 1 2
      "...to ensure people of colour and women always make the final shortlists for openings..."

      With respect, whilst a laudable aim, that's not quite the same thing as actually hiring them.
      Reply |
    • 1 2
      They are remaking the Thomas Crown Affair again!
      Are there no new ideas?!
      Reply |
      • 0 1
        Steve McQueen was brilliant, Pierce Brosnan not so much.
        A third time round sounds like a big mistake and it was a heist movie not a spy thriller.
        The central character was an amoral crook - perhaps they will want to change that aspect of his character too.
        Reply |
      • 0 1
        He was super clever .That's the main thing. What about Focus -wasn't that something similar? And how well did that do?
        Reply |
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    • 4 5
      Quotas are a form of racism since your selection criteria is influenced ( on each role) by the individuals race . role selection should be on their ability, suitability, commercial return, skill set and storyline.
      ( in Hollywood you can never say never but I believe the role of George Washington (:for example) in a historically accurate movie could not be played by any other than a Caucasian - yet there are some who would disagree - or a Caucasian playing Martin Luther king)
      My point is you can't have excluded roles when you have quotas , because that's just another barrier , like the quotas are meant to remove ( everything up for grabs)
      I just don't think quotas are right ( or will work)
      You need to earn your files and plaudits. If one side now has an advantage there will be a backlash overtly and covertly.
      Reply |
      • 2 3
        "George Washington (:for example) in a historically accurate movie could not be played by any other than a Caucasian"
        I don't disagree with you, but we have had decades of white people playing all the other races.
        Alec Guinness - King Faisal an Arab
        Peter Sellers- Indian Doctor
        John Wayne- Genghis Khan - Yes !
        Peter Ustinov- Charlie Chan-Chinese
        Laurence Olivier- Othello- in black face !
        Reply |
      • 0 1
        To be fair to John Wayne there weren't too many Mongol actors in Hollywood in his day.
        Reply |
      • 1 2
        Alec Guinness - King Faisal an Arab
        Peter Sellers- Indian Doctor
        John Wayne- Genghis Khan - Yes !
        Peter Ustinov- Charlie Chan-Chinese
        Laurence Olivier- Othello- in black face !
        That wasnt film it was pantomime ; - )
        Reminds me of how Idris Elba come unstuck when he quoted Ben Kinglsey as a 'white man playing Ghandi'. No - Idris - not quite.
        Reply |
    • 3 4
      My three-year old is not old enough to see Star Wars. But I tell him the story line as bedtime. He eventually saw the characters on the front cover of a magazine. On Finn, he said: "I wish he looked like this," pointing to his wrist. "What, pink?" I replied. He nodded. This came as a surprise to me especially given he is the outcome of a multi-racial marriage. It made me stop and think about the effect of entertainment media on him (and children in general)
      If children mainly see white actors as: mostly heroes, moral, kind, etc then I imagine they become programmed to think that these attributes are intrinsic to white people. By implication, unrepresented or little represented other ethnicities do not benefit from these positive associations.
      As such, the lack of diversity in entertainment media serves to create and perpetuate faulty stereotypes which in turn affects social cohesion and all the detriments for society that flow from that.
      I’m not saying that the media is exclusively to blame for the ills of society on this matter, but it is certainly a prominent part of the jigsaw.
      Perhaps my son shall one day subconsciously let a media manufactured bias cause him to make pre-programmed and irrational decisions
      I’m enjoying seeing a lot more strong female characters in the entertainment media on the last decade. May this continue to a broader array of ethnicities as well.
      Reply |
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    • 0 1
      Star Wars "fans" will love that.
      (The same way Doctor Who "fans" love the idea of a female Doctor...)
      Reply |
      • 0 1
        Or female Ghostbusters for that matter.
        (Cue tiresome and predictable "Jane Bond" jibes from the usual suspects...)
        Reply |
      • 2 3
        I'd be open to the idea personally, though the question did they cast her because they thought it would make the best drama, or because some one decided they wanted to be the one who did it, would nag away.
        Still for those old enough to remember Sylvester McCoy there would be the knowledge it could be worse
        Reply |
      • 1 2
        If you knew any Dr Who fans, then you'd know that most of them are quite open to the Dr being played by a woman, a black person, or any other sort of person you care to mention. We know very little about Time Lords and their ethnic make up, and The Master has already been played by a woman (Michelle Gomez.)
        Reply |
    • 3 4
      Yes, well done. Give in to racist actors taking a hissy fit that their colour didn't win, by allocating jobs based on skin colour.
      How can people not see that by doing this it just puts MORE focus on the person's colour, thus perpetuating any perceived racial difference? There is literally no thought going on here.
      Reply |
    • 0 1
      It's not racism that holds black people back. It's social deprivation, which causes a lack of social mobility among black people.
      Reply |
    • 1 2
      Anybody with a brain can see where Hollywood, along with so much more popular culture now frames things in terms of race and gender. Star Wars... New heroes female and/or black, usually romantically involved, evil guys white and male.
      Reply |
    • 1 2
      Yawnnnnn.
      Find some more creative trolls, white racists. (Maybe you should consider quotas too - oh wait, you can't.)
      Reply |
    • 1 2
      Bones, Spock, get to it already you guys, we need to hit the quota and that faux antagonism over the years was clearly just a front to hide your true feelings.
      Reply |
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    • 2 3
      Ridiculous - people will be shortlisted or not on the basis of their skin colour. From there it's a short step to the audience assuming that casting is not on merit but racially based to satisfy a quota. By the way this is not a complaint of anti-white racism, but it is dissatisfaction with their tokenistic actions
      Reply |
      • 0 1
        What's your solution to the bias towards white men in Hollywood then?
        Reply |
      • 1 2
        Just putting a black face in a movie isn't going to make the movie good, nor will it bring audiences in. If black audiences want to see movies about black people, let their companies make those movies. They are just as racist when it comes to having white actors in "their" movies. You have to market to your audience, and the movie audience is generally divided on race. It's just how it is.
        Reply |
      • 1 2
        To repeat the question. What's your solution to the bias towards white men in Hollywood then?
        Reply |
    • 3 4
      Bad Robot will reportedly work with its agency partner CAA and studios Warner Bros and Paramount to ensure women and minorities are submitted for writing, directing and acting jobs for the company in direct proportion to their representation among the US population.
      So 51% of people submitted for writing, directing and acting jobs will be women? I'll believe that when I see it. But at least there's finally a recognition that women and minorities are actually good for business and not just for filling quotas.
      Reply |
    • 3 4
      More jobs for Romulans and Ferengi in Star Wars!
      Reply |
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    • 8 9
      All black actors in his films can now have the job satisfaction of knowing they got hired primarily for their race.
      No, because Abrams has made it clear that this is to get minorities onto shortlists, in other words that they get a fair crack at the job, but that does not mean they automatically get the job.
      Can't help but think your complete distortion of facts is the kind of thing a hateful rightwing bigot would say in an effort to gin up resentment against minorities.
      Reply |
    • 6 7
      Yay! Go quotas!
      Let's apply this more generally, shall we?
      Let's put ceilings on number of women going to university, shall we? Or Jews? Or East Asians? And why restrict it to films or universities? Why shouldn't we have quotas for all jobs and occupations?
      And have an office of quota enforcement to go with it
      Reply |
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