The Producers Guild of America announced the 10 producers and producing teams invited to take part in its inaugural PGA Create lab for emerging and mid-career creative producers. The program’s focus is on supporting producers from underrepresented backgrounds.
PGA Create will be held October 25-28 and will showcase creative producers and producing teams actively developing, financing and packaging scripted features and series. Participants will have opportunities to hone their project pitches, attend master classes with experienced producers and build their network of fellow producers. As the sole sponsor of this important initiative, Google will be providing an array of resources to help nurture talent from underrepresented communities. Google will be contributing meaningful funding along with a variety of products as a way to help the recipients throughout their creative journeys. PGA Create is designed to provide touch points over the span of one year, including an invitation for participants of its Scripted and Documentary cycles to re-convene during the PGA Create Forum, a new day-long event held during the Guild’s signature Produced By Conference in June 2022.
In a joint statement PGA presidents Gail Berman and Lucy Fisher shared, “Google’s significant support of this important PGA initiative championing diversity, equity and inclusion is critical to driving change in the industry. We’re thrilled to have Google join us as we embark on this new program to build up the next generation of creative producers.”
The partnership with the Producers Guild was negotiated by UTA Marketing, which represents Google.
Producers and producing teams invited to participate in PGA Create sponsored by Google include:
Features
Ashley Flores, Writer/Producer and Sabrina Ehlert, Producer, Madrigal 10
Inspired by true events in 1970, an idealistic Latina lawyer discovers that LA county hospital is performing illegal sterilizations on Latina women and must rally the mothers to go into an impossible fight.
Beverley Gordon, Producer, Experience
Set in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, a lonely, emotionally scarred African-American bus driver, estranged from her family and grieving for her sister, discovers a beautiful love doll on her bus, and begins a journey to find its owner and heal herself.
Nasir Kenneth Ferebee and Quan Lateef-Hill, Producers, Give The Drummer Some
A teenage girl and her friends start a female music rebellion and struggle to survive in 1980’s crack and crime-ridden Washington D.C.
Gia Rigoli, Producer, The Weight Of Land
When a family of Latino ranch hands become ranch owners, small-town politics and violent land feuds drive a wedge between the Estradas and their small Arizona town.
Sav Rodgers, Writer/Producer and Alex Schmider, Producer, I Love You, Felix McNeil
Transgender teenage boy Felix McNeil’s high school start was nearly ordinary — breaking an arm, crushing hard, and juggling the inevitable woes of adolescence — but when a larger-than-life, boundlessly supportive A-list actress/imaginary friend falls into his world from a billboard, things take a turn for the extraordinary.
Rabia Sultana, Producer, Mala Sangre
A Ngäbe indigenous healer finds herself confronted by an intrusive archaeologist obsessed with unlocking the mystery of a sacred site. Her faith is tested when ancestral spirits insist that helping the foreign woman is the only way to save her people.
Series
Ken Arquelio and Juan Pablo Arias Muñoz, Writer/Creators/EP, Desert Rats
After the death of his best friend, a used car salesman undergoing a mid-life crisis, quits his job, and decides to sell luxury real estate after blackmailing a wealthy Palm Springs porn producer who murders her elderly husband.
Rashad Chambers, Writer/Creator/EP, Outliers
Two young black executives go on a journey of self-discovery as they hustle to build an empire that can take down the antiquated old boys’ network.
Marissa Diaz, EP/Creator, The Real And Magical Diaries Of Luna Icaza
Luna inherits her grandmother’s magic on the night of her quinceañera and uses her new power to tame the ancient Mexican mythological creatures that come to destroy her hometown.
Elisha Miranda, Writer/Producer and Audrey Seda, Producer, The Chronicles Of Eva
When a teen girls’ mother is deported back to her country, she discovers her super power of drawing pictures that come to life, she must then decide: save her mother or use her power to make America “nice” again.
The Final Selection Panel was chaired by Tonya Lewis Lee (Co-Founder, ToniK Productions) and Lori McCreary (Madam Secretary) and included: Stephanie Allain (Homegrown Pictures); Mike Farah (CEO, Funny Or Die); Donna Gigliotti (Hidden Figures); Charles Howard (Kaon Interactive); Jon Kilik (The Hunger Games); Mike Larocca (Co-Founder, AGBO); Tia Smith (talentedSOL productions); Shelby Stone (ID8 Multimedia); Roxanne Avent Taylor (CEO, Hidden Empire Films); and Pam Veasey (Long Slow Exhale).
PGA Create was developed through the PGA One Guild initiative, which supports inclusive membership, employment, content, and authentic depictions. Spearheading One Guild are Chairs Tonya Lewis Lee and Lori McCreary.
“Launching PGA Create this year represents our excitement, hope, and determination to uplift and support underrepresented producers, and we believe the immersive structure of the program will be an incredibly impactful way for the PGA to serve our participants. This excitement is shared amongst the Guild’s esteemed network of creative producers who see the value and opportunity in what we have planned. We can’t wait to get started,” read a joint statement from Tonya Lewis Lee and Lori McCreary, chairs of PGA’s One Guild initiative.
The PGA Create program is a reimagining of the longstanding Power of Diversity Master Workshop, which concluded its 18th edition in 2020.
Applications for the Documentary cycle of PGA Create sponsored by Google will open this winter.
Federal judge orders Google to open its Android app store to competition
A federal judge on Monday ordered Google to tear down the digital walls shielding its Android app store from competition as a punishment for maintaining an illegal monopoly that helped expand the company's internet empire.
The injunction issued by U.S. District Judge James Donato will require Google to make several changes that the Mountain View, California, company had been resisting, including a provision that will require its Play Store for Android apps to distribute rival third-party app stores so consumers can download them to their phones if they so desire.
The judge's order will also make the millions of Android apps in the Play Store library accessible to rivals, allowing them to offer up a competitive selection.
Donato is giving Google until November to make the revisions dictated in his order. The company had insisted it would take 12 to 16 months to design the safeguards needed to reduce the chances of potentially malicious software making its way into rival Android app stores and infecting millions of Samsung phones and other mobile devices running on its free Android software.
The court-mandated overhaul is meant to prevent Google from walling off competition in the Android app market as part of an effort to protect a commission system that has been a boon for one of the world's most prosperous companies and helped elevate the market value of its corporate parent Alphabet Inc. to $2 trillion.
Google said in a blog post that it will ask the court to pause the pending changes, and will appeal the court's decision.
Donato also ruled that, for a period three years ending Nov. 1, 2027, Google won't be able to share revenue from its Play Store with anyone who distributes Android apps or is considering launching an... Read More