TV writer Katja Meier has revealed that, when she pitched her script concept to manufacturing firms as a part of a scheme for feminine writers aged 40+, she was requested to make her feminine protagonist 20 years youthful.
Meier instructed The Guardian newspaper she pitched her concept to a number of manufacturing firms with the backing of the UK arm of the Writers Lab programme, however her preliminary enthusiasm turned to dismay:
“You’re thinking, ‘Oh my God, the script came out of a programme for women over 40, and I’m sitting here being told the only way to get it made is to make my lead woman 35? It was literally heartbreaking.”
Meier says that she tried to argue that her audience of girls aged over 50 would respect the story, however this fell on deaf ears.
“In one pitch somebody told me: ‘Yeah, we don’t really believe that women over 50 are a valid audience’,” she says with fun. “And I was just like, ‘Are you f***ing kidding me?’”
Instead, Meier arrange her personal firm Zenka Films 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 instructed The Guardian she hopes to lift cash to make the sequence by launching the pilot on impartial streaming service Olyn.
The newspaper experiences that ladies made up 23% of creators of authentic TV sequence in 2023/24 (figures from the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film).