TV writer Katja Meier has revealed that, when she pitched her script concept to manufacturing corporations as a part of a scheme for feminine writers aged 40+, she was requested to make her feminine protagonist 20 years youthful.
Meier informed The Guardian newspaper she pitched her concept to a number of manufacturing corporations with the backing of the UK arm of the Writers Lab programme, however her preliminary enthusiasm turned to dismay:
“You’re pondering, ‘Oh my God, the script got here out of a programme for girls over 40, and I’m sitting right here being informed the one approach to get it made is to make my lead girl 35? It was actually heartbreaking.”
Meier says that she tried to argue that her target market of ladies aged over 50 would respect the story, however this fell on deaf ears.
“In a single pitch someone informed me: ‘Yeah, we don’t actually imagine that ladies over 50 are a legitimate viewers’,” she says with fun. “And I used to be similar to, ‘Are you f***ing kidding me?’”
As a substitute, Meier arrange her personal firm Zenka Movies and borrowed cash to fund the filming in March 2024 of her pilot of $hare – the story of a 59-year-old girl who inherits a British-Swiss mining firm.
The director informed The Guardian she hopes to lift cash to make the sequence by way of launching the pilot on impartial streaming service Olyn.
The newspaper reviews that ladies made up 23% of creators of unique TV sequence in 2023/24 (figures from the Centre for the Examine of Girls in Tv and Movie).