This week, Queen Latifah teamed up with several other Hollywood stars to launch a new nonprofit production company geared towards creating film and TV stories by and about women. She joins Freida Pinto ("Slumdog Millionaire"), director Amma Asante ("A United Kingdom"), Jessica Chastain ("Zero Dark Thirty") and others on the inaugural advisory board for We Do It Together (WDIT).
Deadline reported on Wednesday (February 24) that Italian producer and philanthropist Chiara Tilesi founded WDIT in response to studies from the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film and the Directors Guild of America that reveal industry inequality. Per those studies, women directed less than 5 percent of studio-released films in 2015 and held only 16 percent of episodic TV direction jobs.
Tilesi will represent WDIT on Monday (February 29) at the United Nations’ Power of Collaboration Global Summit, where she’ll address the marginalization of women in film and TV. The organization plans to announce its first film at the Cannes Film Festival in May.