LuckyChap Entertainment and Hodson Exports have teamed up to create the Lucky Exports Pitch Program (LEPP), a new initiative that provides opportunities for female voices to be heard in the action feature space. Six female-identifying writers have been chosen to participate in the four week writers room which begins on Nov. 4 and goes through Dec. 6. Each of the projects developed will be original action movies that are producible at $30M budgets or below. The goal of the program is to provide the writers the exposure and experience needed in order to become go-to names for studio/franchise jobs. The Lucky Exports Pitch Program will be run by Margot Robbie, Josey McNamara, and Tom Ackerley of LuckyChap and Christina Hodson and Morgan Howell of Hodson Exports.

The six writers selected for the Lucky Exports Pitch Program include Sue Chung (Kaplan Perrone Entertainment), Charmaine DeGrate (Kaplan Perrone Entertainment), Eileen Jones (Verve), Faith Liu (Verve), Dagny Looper (Anonymous), and Maria Sten (Grandview). During the four week workshop, the writers will break, outline, and develop their ideas into studio-ready pitches.

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. John Wells Productions is providing the space for the program.

“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. We couldn’t be more excited to join these six incredible writers on this journey!” said the LuckyChap team.

Said Christina Hodson, “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. 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.”

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