To no surprise, the first set of of shows for Netflix that Shonda Rhimes has been in the works with will have female creatives take the front seat.
What might surprise you a bit is the content. We are used to seeing shows with women in powerful positions full of modern day drama and romance. Shows like, “Scandal” and “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC. Her creative perspective is expanding in her work with Netflix. “I wanted the new Shondaland to be a place where we expand the types of stories we tell, where my fellow talented creatives could thrive and make their best work and where we as a team come to the office each day filled with excitement,” said Rhimes in a statement.
The popular streaming service released a lineup of eight shows currently in the works under the company’s deal with Shonda Rhimes and “Shondaland” productions on Friday.
1) An unnamed show is based around a New York woman who uses her conning techniques to trick the big city’s social elites into funding her luxurious lifestyle. This is based off of a New York Magazine article.
2) The Bridgerton family is the center of a book series by Julia Quinn. It’s a best-selling hit on a historic tale of romance in England. Netflix described it as, “This smart feminist take on Regency England romance unveils the glittering, wealthy, sexual, painful, funny and sometimes lonely lives of the women and men in London’s high society marriage mart as told through the eyes of the powerful Bridgerton family.” For this show Rhimes has recruited Chris Van Dusen from “Scandal” to be her showrunner.
3) “The Warmth of Other Suns,” is based off of Isabel Wilkerson’s award winning book. The book that, “tracks the decades-long migration of African-Americans fleeing the Jim Crow South in search of a better life in the North and the West between 1916 and 1970,” took home a Pulitzer Prize for it’s groundbreaking exposure to a tragic time. A recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, Anna Deavere Smith, has been asked to executive produce the show.
4) “Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change” by Ellen Pao of Silicon Valley blew up the conversation about women in the workplace. This memoir will be the base for another series that will highlight a case that eventually lead to the “Times Up” movement.
5) Kate Andersen Brower wrote a nonfiction about being an insider to the White House called, “The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House” in which Shonda Rhimes and Netflix had recently acquired the rights for. We can expect another series to be inspired by this work. There are no further details on that project.
6) An Emmy Award-winning writer, Janet Leahy, was tapped for “Pico & Sepulveda” as executive producer. “Pico & Sepulveda” will be a series based in the 1840’s! A period piece that, “tracks the end of an idyllic era there as American forces threaten brutality and war at the border to claim this breathtaking land for its own,” according to Netflix. It’s set in “the surreal and sensual backdrop of the then-Mexican state of California.”
7) Jill Alexander is writing the dark-comedy that is in the works. It’s plot centers around female campers that survive an apocalyptic disaster.
8)Lastly, Actress, Debbie Allen, who is in “Grey’s Anatomy” will be a part of another Shondaland series. She runs a dance academy and will have a documentary series centered around it now. Her dance academy is a non-profit organization that provides thorough dance lessons to students ages 4 years and up.
“This is Shondaland 2.0” said Rhimes.
