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Margot Robbie and Christina Hodson’s Production Companies Team on Female Writer’s Program

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LuckyChap Entertainment and Hodson Exports have partnered to launch the Lucky Exports Pitch Program (LEPP). The new initiative has selected six female-identifying writers to participate in the program, in which they will each focus on developing their own idea for an original action feature film.

The program will be run by Margot Robbie, Josey McNamara and Tom Ackerley of LuckyChap Entertainment and Christina Hodson and Morgan Howell of Hodson Exports.

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LuckyChap Entertainment and Hodson Exports will be attached to produce each project. The four-week writers’ room begins Nov. 4 and runs through Dec. 6. Each of the projects will be original action movies that are producible for $30 million and under.

Over the course of four weeks, the writers will break, outline and develop their ideas into studio-ready pitches. Spanning a range of tones and genres, all the projects will demonstrate the participants’ ability to write action. The ambition of the program is to bring the writers the exposure and experience they need in order to become go-to names for studio/franchise jobs.

The Lucky Exports participants were selected through a multi-step process. A group of samples were read blindly and from those a pool of writers were invited to apply to the program. The application consisted of a written questionnaire followed by in-person interviews conducted by LuckyChap Entertainment and Hodson Exports.

Additionally, more than a dozen speakers, including actors, directors, producers and writers, will be joining LEPP for informal Q&As and workshops. Speakers coming to the program include (but are not limited to) Lindsey Beer, Max Borenstein, Peter Craig, Sue Kroll, Chris Morgan, Chantal Nong, Zak Penn, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Bek Smith, Chad Stahelski, Oren Uziel and Courtenay Valenti.

The six writers selected for the Lucky Exports Pitch Program are Sue Chung (Lindsay Perraud/Kaplan Perrone Entertainment), Charmaine DeGrate (Josh Goldenberg/Kaplan Perrone Entertainment), Eileen Jones (Nicky Mohebbi/Verve), Faith Liu (Nicky Mohebbi/Verve), Dagny Looper (Amar Hansen/Anonymous) and Maria Sten (Zac Frognowski/Grandview).

“We feel it is both a responsibility and a great honor to help create opportunities for the voices in our industry who are not yet being heard in the big budget action space,” the LuckyChap partners said in a statement. “We couldn’t be more excited to join these six incredible writers on this journey!”

“It is no secret that there are more men than women getting hired to write big-budget studio movies, and yet there are a huge number of talented female voices looking to break into this space,” Hodson said. “I have been extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on a number of franchise movies, alongside great male and female writers. Feature writing has traditionally been a solitary exercise but it doesn’t need to be. I wanted to create a program that was as much about peer to peer collaboration and community as it is about changing the statistics. Margot and I share a passion for championing female voices and feel that one way to do that is to connect these writers with a wide-array of experts in big-budget filmmaking – men and women alike.”

John Wells Productions is providing the space for the program.

LuckyChap Entertainment is represented by Management 360, CAA, attorney Jeff Bernstein and Narrative PR. Hodson Exports are represented by Kaplan Perrone Entertainment, Ziffren Brittenham, and CAA.

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