Women In Film's Kirsten Schaffer and The Black List's Franklin Leonard Getty Images
The new initiative, which kicks off in August, will select eight women to participate.
Women In Film Los Angeles and The Black List are looking out for female writers.
The two organizations are teaming to create a television lab for women writers. The program will run for eight weeks beginning in August and will consist of script development, workshopping sessions and master classes with established writers and industry executives.
Eight women will be selected to participate in the first lab, and will be selected through script submissions to The Black List and Women In Film. They'll go on to be hosted by the Black List website for free and have their final pilots read by multiple agencies and networks.
“The dearth of roles for women both in front of and behind the camera has been widely chronicled,” WIF executive director Kirsten Schaffer said Thursday in a statement. “As high-quality television programming grows more popular and prominent daily, so too does the need for women to have an inclusive voice, to be equally represented in the creative process.”
Added Franklin Leonard, founder and CEO of The Black List: "Though it's noteworthy that the most recent WGAW Hollywood Writers Report heralded 2014 as a high water mark for women's employment in television, underrepresentation by a factor of two to one is still unconscionable. This lab hopes to support more women in their pursuit of creating and writing the television that will define our culture for generations to come. We couldn't be more pleased to partner with Women In Film to do so."
