Industry vet Michelle Sneed, former president of Tyler Perry Studios, has launched A Few Good Women Productions. Led by an all-women team, the new venture operates on a business model which has the ability to greenlight and maintain project autonomy through every phase of acquisition, development, financing, production, licensing and distribution. The content studio’s mantra is to embrace projects driven by complex and dynamic characters who represent diverse people, places, cultures and concepts.
“We’re building the space that we’ve always wanted to be a part of, where the most authentic, innovative, and diverse talents–both in front of and behind the camera–can shine and we, as a highly experienced all-women executive team can level the playing field by provisioning the deserved compensation, equity and credit currency for those who look like us and beyond,” said Sneed, founder and CEO of A Few Good Women Productions. “The power to greenlight and underwrite diverse projects through a premium lens with high integrity deal making starts at the top and is mission critical to the future and standing of multicultural executives, creatives, producers and storytellers.”
Sneed brings some 17 years of experience in TV and film production to A Few Good Women Productions. As the first woman president of Tyler Perry Studios, Sneed oversaw production for all film, television and new media projects. During her tenure in this role, she led the launches of and executive produced several new series resulting in over 450 episodes of television as well as three feature films including the top-rated and most successful BET and BET+ series Sistas, The Oval, Ruthless, Bruh and All The Queen’s Men; the Nickelodeon series Young Dylan; Netflix films A Fall From Grace, A Madea Homecoming and A Jazzman’s Blues. Prior to this, Sneed served as director of physical production for BET Networks where she oversaw and executed multiple scripted, docu-film and live shows including the BET Awards and the critically acclaimed late night talk show, The Rundown With Robin Thede.
A graduate of Michigan State University, Sneed is a member of the Producers Guild of America and serves on the Board of Governors for the Paley Center as well as the Dream Chasers Foundation. She is also the recipient of the 2022 Girls With Gifts “Givers Award.”
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More