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There are so many
different factors

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that go into how you put your
money together for your movies.

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It's a tremendously kind of
delicate balance to strike

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with the people who are
financing your movie.

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All of Hollywood is
a giant craps table,

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and you know, we're
just all gambling

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to figure out what's gonna hit.

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When I started, the
studios were very small
companies.

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They were generally owned

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by small groups of people,

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but they became parts
of bigger companies.

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They became behemoths.

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The reason why
there's such power

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centered in a few
companies in Hollywood,

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it's because it's very
expensive to do what they do.

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Anyone can make a TikTok,

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anyone can make
an Instagram story.

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Very few can make
a 200-million-dollar movie

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and put it out
all over the world.

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So, the stakes are really high.

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Studios have, you know,
creative executives

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who meet with directors,
meet with writers,

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meet with actors.

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Those executives
are reading scripts,

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and they're trying to agitate
to get projects made.

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There are very few women

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in positions of true power
within the studio system.

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There are a lot of female
executives, especially in
television.

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But in the true
decision-maker spot,

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the person who, buck stops with,
has to say,

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"Yes, we will make
this 200-million-dollar movie,"

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or "No, we will not," they
are overwhelmingly white men.

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Even when
women run studios,

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there hasn't been, like,
a massive change

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in the way the system ran,

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because they then don't bring
other women up behind them

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because of that
sort of perceived competition,

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that there can only be one.

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And then, they leave, and then
we're sort of back to square
one.

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Somebody was posing the question

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I think to a male executive
at one of the studios,

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"Why is it you think that there
are less women in these
positions?"

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And the two words
that came up,

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was more like,
"Well, it's a risk."

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And that's the nut
we need to crack.

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Why are we seen as a risk?

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When you are
putting together a project,

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the approved list
at a studio is,

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who is allowed to do movies that
are over 100 million dollars

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that are generally speaking
for the summertime?

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Those people
are only of a certain type.

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They are, at this point,

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again, generally male,
generally white,

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with a couple of additional
males of color on the list.

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The list is derived
from the bench,

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and the bench is usually
a film festival

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in which one to three,
usually males, are plucked out,

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and then, from their $400,000
film, they are then handed

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a multimillion-dollar film.

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It's one thing to
give a person who's less often
hired

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the little scrappy one
that they can kill themselves
making,

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and how many people
are gonna see it.

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It's another thing to say,
here's a giant piece

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of intellectual property.

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And similarly,
in television,

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I get asked to direct
a lot of episodes of TV.

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But I can feel when it's time
to give a woman a pilot,

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people are like,
"Uh, I've been working on this

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for five years,
and this is actually the..."

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And there's-- you know,
we aren't used to trusting

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that a lot of women
can do that job spectacularly.

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Men are allowed to go
and make shit movies

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and carry on being
extremely well-paid.

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Women can't really do that.

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You'll-- you'll be replaced
quite quickly.

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"Aeon Flux" was
a big complicated movie

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with a steep
learning curve for me

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in terms of tons and tons
of visual effects,

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entirely designed worlds.

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And ultimately, the studio went
through three different regimes

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while we made the movie.

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I was asked to take a step back
while another team

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did a pass at editing the film.

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I think it's fair to say that
that initial pass was a
disaster.

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And so, I was brought back in

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to essentially oversee
the new version

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that the studio wanted.

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As a youngish female directing
what was meant to become

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a potential franchise for a
studio, I don't think anybody

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quite knew how to advocate
for the moment,

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because the moment
hadn't arrived yet.

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I wasn't supposed
to be at that party.

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I do think because I was female,

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the notion of failure was
spotlighted with a brighter
light,

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and served as some kind
of implicit proof

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that can't women
can't do this job,

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or can't make those
kinds of movies.

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The conditions would have to be
quite a bit different

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for me to take on
a big-budget studio movie

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without a sense of ironclad
relationships around me

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that could support me
through the process.

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When the movie
came out and was a huge hit,

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the director, Jon Chu,
called me up and said,

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"You know, we want to do
the sequels,

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"and let's just
knock 'em out

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and have the best time
ever." And it sounded great.

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And the studios thought
that I should team up

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with Pete Chiarelli,
who was the writer

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prior to me on "Crazy Rich."

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And so, my thought
was that I would do it,

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but I wanted to be paid equally.

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I can't get the exact
dollar amount, but his quote

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was over a million dollars,

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and the initial offer
they made me

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was $130,000, or, $150,000,
something like that.

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When he said it, I broke out
laughing on the phone.

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I just was like, ha!

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Because it was a fraction
of what I would have made

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writing for a CW show
for the year.

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The movie engendered
so much warmth

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and positivity with the
community, and really brought us
all together.

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I just didn't want
to detract from that.

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I didn't want, um...

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I didn't want there to be
this bad feeling after the fact.

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But at the end of the day,
I thought, you know,

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if this is doing so much
to advance our stories,

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me, you know, taking... taking
a step back and accepting this,

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like, that's really setting
us back, if anything.

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So... yeah.

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The most gratifying part
was hearing other writers

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use my story
as a negotiation tactic,

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that when they were
not getting parity,

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they would say,
"Well, Adele Lim did this,

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and now the studios know
that there are consequences."

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The biggest
impediments to equal pay

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between men and
women in Hollywood

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has just been the silence
on the subject.

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If you look at the sports world,
for example,

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we all know exactly how much
LeBron James makes.

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We know how much
Patrick Mahomes makes,

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and their deals are reported on
and obsessed over

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like it's their performance
on the field.

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Hollywood's not like that.
Why is that?

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And that's because these studios
capitalize on the silence.

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So, they do the work,
they should be able to get the
access.

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They do the work, they should be
able to be on the bench.

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If they do the work, they should
be able to be on the list.

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Enough.

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Make the playing field even.

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Once the
studio's on board, you're good
to go.

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But the process of
actually filming a movie,

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being on location,
having a huge cast and crew,

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this is when a lot can go wrong,
and often does.