Paul Feig has announced that his company Feigco Entertainment has adopted an inclusion rider for all future film and TV productions made by his company.
Feig (Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters) stated on Twitter: “Thrilled to announce that Feigco Entertainment is officially adopting an #inclusionrider for all our film and TV productions moving forward. Thank you to @Inclusionists and Stacy L. Smith for their guidance and inspiration. We challenge other companies and studios to do the same.”
An inclusion rider is a clause in a professional contract which states that a cast and crew on a production must meet a certain level of diversity in order to go ahead. It’s a concept that was pitched by the aforementioned Social Scientist Stacy L. Smith in her TED talk ‘The Data Behind Hollywood’s Sexism’ as a solution to Hollywood’s problem with diversity. It’s an excellent video and a good starting point for anyone interested in learning more about this issue.
Frances McDormand championed the cause by finishing her Oscar acceptance speech this year with “I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentlemen: inclusion rider.” This has brought the idea into the public eye and as a result there is increasing pressure on companies and individuals to adopt such clauses in order to increase visibility for people who have historically been under-represented by Hollywood.
Thrilled to announce that Feigco Entertainment is officially adopting an #inclusionrider for all our film and TV productions moving forward. Thank you to @Inclusionists and Stacy L. Smith for their guidance and inspiration. We challenge other companies and studios to do the same.
— Paul Feig (@paulfeig) March 13, 2018
The huge success of recent films such as Black Panther and Wrinkle in Time have shown that the old adage of ‘It won’t sell’ is simply false, and one only needs to look to The Hunger Games or Star Wars: The Force Awakens to see that films with female protagonists can indeed draw big crowds.
As a form of affirmative action, an inclusion rider is a superb way to ensure that more women and people of colour are given opportunities that have been denied to them in the past, whether by premeditated bias or the insidious assumption that white and male are the default for any given character.
Feig’s announcement comes hot on the heels of similar statements from Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Michael B Jordan, who have all adopted inclusion riders and vowed that their future projects will be diverse both in front of and behind the camera.
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