Lauren Faust: Pitching TV Shows For Girls is “Like Banging My Head Against the Wall”

Sony Pictures Animation has posted a well made nine-minute video profile of Lauren Faust, who is currently developing the Medusa feature.

In the interview, she talks openly about her struggle to convince animation executives to allow her to develop shows for girls, which could have something to do with the unstated discriminatory policies against women creators at the major TV animation studios:

I started developing cartoons and series for girls. I would pitch shows to executives at different studios, and people would really like the stories and really like the characters, but then tell me, ‘We don’t want shows for girls.’ They were attributing the poor performance of these shows to the gender of the target audience instead of to the quality of the shows. It was like banging my head against the wall; I just couldn’t get through.

But the interview isn’t about dwelling on the inequalities in TV animation. Faust is being profiled to promote her directorial role on Medusa which she says combines some of her favorite things like Greek mythology, magic, and a girl protagonist. She says the challenge is taking a character that’s always been portrayed as beastly and learning who she was a person and what kind of a story could be told with Medusa as the protagonist.

This could be a winning project for Sony that distinguishes them from the feature competition in a way that the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Smurfs franchises haven’t done. Hopefully they will find a way to push Medusa forward.