The 20 Most Powerful Women in Global Entertainment – The Hollywood Reporter

“This decade [has] to be about girls having one another’s backs,” stated Kate Winslet in her Sept. 19 Emmy acceptance speech for HBO’s Mare of Easttown. World wide, the worldwide movie and tv trade’s strongest girls had already been arduous at work with that mission. Feminine producers, studio executives and channel bosses are seeing a historic alternative to capitalize on the seismic modifications wrought by the #MeToo motion to push for true inclusion and variety throughout the leisure enterprise.

However spectacular advances in onscreen illustration haven’t been matched by positive aspects in company energy buildings, the place, not less than on the very high and notably exterior the USA, it’s nonetheless very a lot a person’s world. “Numerous work must be accomplished within the C-suite, the place severe choices are made,” notes Mo Abudu, CEO of pan-African TV conglomerate EbonyLife Media.

Nonetheless, the glass ceiling smashers on The Hollywood Reporter‘s annual listing of the world’s strongest feminine leisure execs are united of their ardour to proceed to combat for systemic trade modifications and to encourage youthful girls to, as Rola Bauer, president of MGM Worldwide TV Productions, places it, “search acknowledgment and credit score for his or her work [and] not get neglected of the narrative.”

Mo Abudu
Founder, EbonyLife Media (Nigeria)
Nigerian producer and tv pioneer Abudu made historical past in 2020 when her pan-African leisure banner EbonyLife Media signed a multi-title take care of Netflix, making it the primary African manufacturing firm to enter into such an settlement with the worldwide streamer. Earlier this yr, Sony Footage Tv’s worldwide manufacturing division prolonged its unique take care of EbonyLife, giving the studio first decide of the scripted tv initiatives meant for international audiences which have been created, originated or developed by Abudu’s firm. The primary mission between Sony and EbonyLife is a collection impressed by the story of the elite feminine West African fighters referred to as the Dahomey Warriors. EbonyLife additionally has a co-production take care of AMC Networks for a slate of initiatives together with the Afrofuturistic crime-drama Nigeria 2099. Abudu, who is commonly referred to as “Africa’s Oprah,” says she’s accustomed to being underestimated and hopes her against-the-odds success will encourage the subsequent era of feminine executives to “dream massive and be daring together with your imaginative and prescient.” Ever the nuts-and-bolts producer, nonetheless, Abudu’s first piece of recommendation for newcomers is to “concentrate on manufacturing high quality — discover one of the best technicians and negotiate!”

Rola Bauer
President, Worldwide Tv Productions at MGM (Germany)
When French large StudioCanal exercised its choice in 2020 to take full management of Bauer’s Munich-based Tandem Productions shingle, the pioneering, two-time Emmy-nominated worldwide producer moved on to the subsequent problem. Stepping down as co-head of Tandem and managing director at StudioCanal, Bauer joined MGM as president of worldwide tv productions and, within the midst of a world pandemic, constructed up the studio’s international drama slate. In simply over a yr, the Canadian-born Bauer has shepherded six collection to greenlight, together with Amazon’s Argentine dramedy El Fin del Amor, the variation of Harlan Coben’s Shelter and the environmental-themed thriller collection Final Mild starring Matthew Fox. A self-confessed “information junkie,” Bauer seems to be to the broader world to information initiatives that her workforce develops for a world viewers, at all times with an eye fixed for “tales nonetheless untold” and an ear for underrepresented voices: “The actual fact is, international audiences need and wish their feelings and lives mirrored onscreen greater than ever, and it’s our accountability as storytellers to present them that range … whether or not by fiction or actuality.”

Valerie Creighton
President and CEO, Canada Media Fund (Canada)
As head of the most important financier of Canadian TV, Creighton performed a key position in holding the lights on through the COVID-19 lockdown for the roughly 1,500 native productions the fund helps. A 30-year veteran of the trade, Creighton has additionally been instrumental in pushing by gender steadiness measures in Canada — girls now make up simply over half of the nation’s working writers and producers, in addition to 36 % of administrators on CMF-funded TV initiatives — and selling range with schemes that work straight with underrepresented communities. Her recommendation to younger girls getting into the enterprise? “Keep by yourself floor and it doesn’t matter what, cling on like hell to your genuine self.”

Christa Dickenson
Government Director and CEO, Telefilm Canada (Canada)
After twenty years of slicing her hair quick to “give me an edge” and be taken extra critically within the male-dominated world of Canadian leisure, Dickenson, head of main indie movie financier Telefilm, modified her look by “swapping [my] signature crew lower for naturally grey shoulder-length hair. This may occasionally sound superficial to some. It isn’t. Picture issues.” To vary the picture, and influence, of Telefilm, which invests round $100 million in Canadian movie yearly, Dickenson has shifted the main focus of the federal government funding physique to backing initiatives from underrepresented filmmakers, notably folks of shade. Reaching gender parity within the Canadian movie trade, she says, “is just a primary step. [I wish] to see a Black, Indigenous or individual of shade succeed me in my position on the finish of my time period at Telefilm. It’s inherent for these of us in management roles to go the baton, to make sure range of considering.”

Jane Featherstone
Founder, Sister (U.Ok.)
Within the house of only a few years, Sister has emerged as one of the vital prolific, thrilling and award-amassing TV manufacturing firms within the enterprise. First based as Sister Footage by Featherstone after a prolonged stint at Brit indie Kudos and its proprietor Shine (the place she oversaw hit dramas resembling Broadchurch, Spooks and Utopia), it was relaunched as Sister in 2019, with the formidable duo of Stacey Snider and Elisabeth Murdoch becoming a member of the highest exec workforce. But it surely has continued alongside the identical groundbreaking path laid by Featherstone. Excessive on the listing of accomplishments is the HBO-Sky smash-hit miniseries Chernobyl, winner of greater than 60 awards (together with 10 Emmys); amongst its different vastly well-received exhibits are the BBC-Netflix thriller Giri/Haji and Sky-AMC’s Gangs of London (now heading right into a second season). Sister has been touchdown among the hottest IP round and high expertise are clamoring to work with the rising studio, with an upcoming slate that features Amazon’s The Energy, tailored from Naomi Alderman’s best-seller with Reed Morano directing; BBC-AMC collection This Is Going to Damage, based mostly on Adam Kay’s memoir and with Ben Whishaw within the lead; and Sky-HBO true crime drama Landscapers, starring Olivia Colman.

Teresa Fernández-Valdés
Co-founder, Bambú Producciones (Spain)
As co-founder and co-head, with accomplice Ramón Campos, of prolific Spanish manufacturing firm Bambú, Fernández-Valdés has been on the forefront of the worldwide tv revolution. Bambú’s interval melodramas Grand Resort (2010-2013) and Velvet (2013-2016) have been among the many first non-English-language collection to interrupt by worldwide, and the corporate has helped ignite the worldwide streaming explosion by signing a first-look take care of Netflix (Bambú’s Cable Ladies was Netflix’s first Spanish authentic) and inking with Apple TV+ for that firm’s first Spanish authentic, the Miami-set thriller Now and Then. Bambú is presently producing its first Amazon authentic, referred to as A Non-public Affair, a criminal offense drama set in Spain and that includes French famous person Jean Reno. 4 years after the #MeToo revolution shook the foundations of the male-dominated leisure trade, Fernández-Valdés calls on feminine executives to take critically their accountability in shaping the position fashions of the long run. “They’ve the facility to concentrate on the tales that signify range and equality and make them accessible to most of the people,” she notes. “As a producer, I can select what tales to inform.”

Cécile Frot-Coutaz
CEO, Sky Studios (U.Ok.)
French trade veteran Frot-Coutaz made waves in Could when Comcast’s European TV large Sky named her CEO of its manufacturing arm Sky Studios (Gangs of London, A Discovery of Witches). “Sky is an organization that I’ve at all times admired as a content material maker, as a accomplice and as a shopper,” she defined in saying her transfer. With regards to feminine illustration and fairness, she tells THR, “we should acknowledge that we’re by no means accomplished,” however she is “inspired that the trade is altering for the higher.” By way of range and equality, she argues COVID has allowed folks “to actually see our colleagues as people with their very own private challenges,” that means that “in some methods, it’s been an incredible leveler, and I hope that is still.”

Rose Garnett
Director, BBC Movies (U.Ok.)
The previous 24 months have really helped showcase the influence of Garnett at BBC Movies, the filmmaking arm of the BBC and one among U.Ok. unbiased cinema’s key financiers. Having joined in 2017 from Film4 (the place she helped help the likes of American Honey and Room), she first rebuilt virtually all the inventive workforce, led by fee government Eva Yates and head of growth Claudia Yusef, after which helped oversee a slate of daring and various options which have been broadly celebrated throughout festivals and showered with awards, together with Judy, which gained Renée Zellweger an Oscar in 2020, Francis Lee’s Ammonite and extra not too long ago, Jane Campion’s The Energy of the Canine. Requested what recommendation she’d give to girls beginning out within the trade, she says, “Discover ‘your’ workforce — from colleagues, casual community, collaborators — no matter kind it must take.”

Jay Hunt
Inventive Director, Worldwide Video, Europe for Apple (U.Ok.)
A much-admired TV exec having led a surge in profitable commissions whereas at Brit community Channel 4, Hunt appeared to go quiet after being poached by Apple in 2017 to steer European commissioning. With Apple TV+ now making some noise, Hunt’s experience, particularly with expertise, is beginning to shine by. The upcoming Claire Danes- and Tom Hiddleston-fronted drama The Essex Serpent, from Prime of the Lake and The Energy of the Canine banner See-Noticed Movies, in 2020 marked her first order, whereas Hunt not too long ago made Sharon Horgan — whose breakout Disaster she commissioned at Channel 4 — Apple TV+’s first big-name European signing, with a comedy-drama now within the works.

Christina Jennings
Chairman and CEO, Shaftesbury (Canada)
With a slate that features Netflix’s Slasher, dog-and-cop household collection Hudson & Rex and the long-running CBC interval procedural Murdoch Mysteries, Toronto-based Shaftesbury, based by Jennings in 1987, has established itself as a world chief in small-screen drama, one thing AMC Networks acknowledged when it invested within the firm earlier this yr by a manufacturing partnership that can see Jennings’ shingle develop content material for the community. “It was a acutely aware determination on our half to proceed to develop our firm as a world content material supplier,” notes Jennings, who regards fellow female-led Canadian firms, like Jennifer Twiner-McCarron’s publicly traded Thunderbird Leisure Group and the not too long ago launched Cameron Footage from Gemini Award-winning screenwriters Tassie and Amy Cameron, as prime examples of how feminine executives are taking the lead north of the border.

Minyoung Kim
VP Content material for Asia Pacific, Netflix (South Korea)
Kim joined Netflix in 2016 after distinguished stints at Twitter, NBCUniversal and Korean leisure large CJ E&M. She was introduced on by Netflix as one of many firm’s first content material executives based mostly in Asia — and her rise since then has been nothing in need of meteoric. From serving to the streamer arrange its first small Seoul workplace to hashing out a modest preliminary slate of acquired and self-produced Korean originals 5 years in the past, Kim’s workforce is now spending greater than half a billion {dollars} on Korean content material in 2021 alone. Her remit has since been expanded steadily to comprise each different high-value development market within the Asia-Pacific area besides India. “Once I assume again to once I first began, I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest goals the range and high quality of the slate we now have throughout APAC,” Kim says. “From Kingdom: Ashin of the North, Bangkok Breaking … [to] after all, Squid Sport! We’ve come to date in simply 5 years.”

Miky Lee
Vice Chair, CJ Group (South Korea)
For a symbolic instance of Lee’s rising profile in Hollywood, look no additional than her election in September 2020 as vice chair of the Academy Museum’s board of trustees, behind solely Ted Sarandos. Since making Oscar historical past with Parasite almost two years in the past, Lee has continued to steer CJ’s huge dealings in leisure worldwide, together with local-language variations (TNT’s Snowpiercer) and authentic co-productions (road-trip film Ok-Pop: Misplaced in America, in growth with producer Lynda Obst). That is along with CJ’s ongoing movie and TV manufacturing and distribution, its CGV cinema chain and Korean music pageant KCON, which has already staged 5 weeklong digital editions for the reason that daybreak of the pandemic.

Anna Marsh
CEO, StudioCanal (France)
Since March 2019, the New Zealand-born Marsh has been head of StudioCanal, the worldwide tv manufacturing and distribution arm of French large Canal+ and one among Europe’s main small-screen producers. The worldwide content material increase has been good to StudioCanal, which, below Marsh’s management, now produces greater than 200 hours of recent drama programming yearly by its community of award-winning manufacturing firms, together with Germany’s Tandem (Shadowplay), Brit-based RED Manufacturing (Years and Years) and Spain’s Bambú Producciones (Cable Ladies). Marsh says she not often thinks about her gender as “being an impediment” in her profession. “Regardless of who you might be today, our trade presents an array of perpetual challenges that maintain us all on our toes.” She provides, nonetheless, that for a lot of in less-privileged industries, the COVID-19 disaster has been “catastrophic for development of girls within the office in some nations. Many have needed to sacrifice their careers in favor of staying dwelling to take care of ailing relations, or home-school youngsters through the lockdown, undoing a long time of constructive change. This places quite a bit into perspective.”

Anne Mensah
VP Unique Collection, Netflix (U.Ok.)
In 2020, Netflix doubled the spend on its productions within the U.Ok. — its greatest market exterior the U.S. — to $1 billion. Among the many keepers of the keys to this sizable battle chest is Mensah, the BBC and Sky drama veteran who was poached in 2018 because the streaming large was dramatically beefing up its London operations. Alongside the continued success of Brit-made international hits resembling The Crown, Intercourse Training and The Witcher, Netflix has rained cash down on U.Ok. TV producers, signing an unique take care of The Crown creator Peter Morgan and investing within the new banner from Black Mirror‘s Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones. The streamer has additionally backed scores of scripted exhibits, together with seven commissioned in December from creatives and execs, numbering amongst them Rowan Atkinson, Pippa Harris, Andy Serkis, Joe Cornish and Tessa Ross. Mensah has additionally helped drive Netflix’s native range initiatives, resembling a $480,000 funding that can go towards scholarships this yr on the Identification College of Appearing, the pioneering London college that counts John Boyega, Letitia Wright and Michaela Coel amongst its alums. “Within the U.Ok. we have to change the facility dynamic and promote inclusion on the highest ranges,” Mensah says. “We should guarantee range amongst these with monetary and inventive energy.”

Charlotte Moore
Chief Content material Officer, BBC (U.Ok.)
In 2020, Moore was the one girl amongst 4 main contenders vying for the highest director-general job on the BBC. Whereas she could not have gotten that place, Moore — then director of BBC content material and head of the flagship BBC One channel — was quickly upped to the BBC board and named chief content material officer, a promotion that made the already extremely regarded exec one of the vital highly effective figures in international TV, increasing her remit to incorporate not simply overseeing all the BBC’s community TV channels, however radio, schooling and youngsters’s content material as effectively. Unafraid to take photographs on the streamers which have poached BBC-nurtured expertise resembling Phoebe Waller-Bridge lately, Moore has additionally turn into a champion of the drive to extend range. “As an trade we’re getting there onscreen,” she says, “however now we have to focus our power offscreen and problem each manufacturing to do extra to advertise range and equality at each stage.”

Jennifer Mullin
CEO, Fremantle (U.Ok.)
As CEO of indie manufacturing large Fremantle, Mullin oversees a enterprise that in 2020 accounted for $1.83 billion in income. Underneath her management as Fremantle’s first American head, the inventive powerhouse behind the American Idol and America’s Acquired Expertise franchises has continued its push into drama (The Mosquito Coast, The New Pope and No Man’s Land) to develop the corporate’s international footprint. In April, Fremantle made headlines with a deal that noticed it take full management of Tel Aviv-based Abot Hameiri, the manufacturing firm behind Netflix hit drama Shtisel. “We’ve an thrilling and bold development plan,” Mullin tells THR, however provides she is “equally centered on our [company] tradition.” In any case, “with no nice tradition, development is stifled and we could lose what makes us particular — our spirit of creativity and entrepreneurship.” Mullin has served as CEO since succeeding Cécile Frot-Coutaz in September 2018 after holding the identical position at FremantleMedia North America. Earlier than becoming a member of Fremantle, she labored as an government producer at such firms as Paramount and Telepictures.

Cathy Payne
CEO, Banijay Rights (France)
Because the boss of worldwide tv gross sales large Banijay Rights, a job she took over in April 2020, the Australian-born Payne oversees a large catalog of iconic TV manufacturers and codecs, from Survivor and MasterChef to Peaky Blinders and Black Mirror. Arising by the ranks — she spent twenty years at reality-TV pioneer Endemol Shine, beginning at Australian division Southern Star and finally taking on as CEO of Endemol Shine Worldwide — Payne says she usually encountered an “outdated boys’ membership” mentality together with “unwelcome, condescending habits,” attitudes she says have “fortunately principally disappeared” from right now’s TV enterprise. A agency believer in creating sturdy help networks for girls in leisure, Payne sees it as her company accountability to make sure that Banijay has a “everlasting focus” on bettering range and equality and creating the “proper paths for these underrepresented to seek out methods into our trade.” She says her working-class origins inform her strategy. “Financial inequality is at all times an enormous concern,” she notes.

Christina Sulebakk
Basic Supervisor, HBO Max EMEA (Europe, Center East and Africa) (U.Ok.)
Former freelance movie journalist Sulebakk’s profession trajectory has trended upward ever since she entered the advertising enterprise at Canal+, turning into a seasoned government with over 15 years of expertise and a repute for beginning up companies and constructing groups. After becoming a member of HBO Nordic and shifting by the HBO ranks for greater than eight years, together with stints in Madrid, Budapest and New York, she was promoted in July 2020 to the position of common supervisor, HBO Europe and in January grew to become common supervisor, HBO Max EMEA. At present, she is concentrated on the streamer’s roll-out within the Nordics and Spain on Oct. 26 and extra markets subsequent yr. As for elevated equality within the trade, Sulebakk says her Danish roots give her distinctive perspective on the modifications that also must happen. “I’m lucky to come back from Denmark, the place gender equality and inclusion are way more the norm,” she says. “Hopefully we’re seeing that unfold throughout geographical boundaries.”

Jane Tranter
Co-founder, Unhealthy Wolf (U.Ok.)
Already a near-legendary determine in British TV after overseeing the vastly profitable 2005 resurrection of Physician Who whereas she was BBC drama chief, Tranter not too long ago underlined her cult credentials by bringing the HBO-BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Darkish Supplies to screens by way of her Unhealthy Wolf banner, arrange in 2015 alongside fellow BBC and Physician Who alum Julie Gardner. One of the vital bold TV exhibits thus far, His Darkish Supplies — shot principally within the huge Unhealthy Wolf studio Tranter helped arrange in South Wales, and not too long ago renewed for a 3rd and ultimate season — isn’t the one mission on the corporate’s books. Tranter’s slate additionally contains the current HBO-BBC monetary drama Business and the HBO Max-Sky comedy I Hate Suzie, from Succession author Lucy Prebble. Talking of Succession, Tranter is an exec producer on that present, too. As for Physician Who, Tranter is rejoining the present, with Unhealthy Wolf not too long ago introduced as producer on the collection when Russell T. Davies returns as showrunner in 2023.

Kayo Washio
Head of U.S. Operations, Wowow (Japan)
Early in her profession at Japan’s main pay TV broadcaster Wowow, Washio was an interviewer for the corporate’s film channel, internet hosting sit-downs with A-list Hollywood stars as they launched their initiatives to the Japanese market. In 2011, she was dispatched to Los Angeles to move up Wowow’s first U.S. workplace, tasked with sustaining and increasing the broadcaster’s output offers with the key Hollywood studios. As her relationships within the U.S. flourished, she organized for Wowow to co-produce numerous prestigious documentary initiatives, resembling Martin Scorsese’s The New York Assessment of Books: A 50 Yr Argument and Robert Redford and Wim Wenders’ six-part TV collection Cathedrals of Tradition. In her most up-to-date incarnation, as competitors from U.S. streamers has begun to place strain on Wowow’s mannequin, Washio has headed up the corporate’s diversification into theatrical distribution, buying titles like pandemic drama Music Chicken, produced by Michael Bay, and likewise arranging for Wowow to co-produce high-profile Hollywood collection content material, like HBO Max’s forthcoming Japan-set yakuza thriller Tokyo Vice, directed by Michael Mann. With regards to elevated range within the trade, Washio says there may be nonetheless loads of work to be accomplished. “It has definitely been an illuminating yr with anti-Asian prejudices in America below the microscope and disconcerting information and statistics associated to Asian illustration in Hollywood coming to gentle,” she says. “It’s clear there have to be extra strident inclusion efforts throughout the leisure ecosystem.”

This story first appeared within the Oct. 6 difficulty of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.