“Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal” writer and producer Shonda Rhimes and Netflix have obtained TV rights to the memior of #MeToo icon and former Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ellen Pao.
“So excited to be part of this next chapter for @shondaland and @shondarhimes!” Pao tweeted Friday, referring to the famed producer and her TV production company.
Pao’s 2012 gender-discrimination lawsuit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins failed, but it is widely credited for blowing the lid off pervasive sexual misconduct by men in the valley’s technology industry.
Rhimes, known for her ABC TV hits, this year signed a four-year deal estimated to be worth $100 million with Los Gatos-based Netflix, the video-streaming giant announced in August. Shondaland now resides exclusively within Netflix, though Rhimes will still work on “Grey’s Anatomy,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Rhimes plans to make — and write herself — a TV series based on Pao’s memoir “Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change,” the New York Times reported Friday.
Rhimes’ Shondaland, under Netflix, will produce eight TV series including one based on Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns,” about migration of blacks from the South to the Northeast, and the one based on Pao’s book, Variety reported.
“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,” Rhimes told Variety.
Pao, who after her lawsuit spent nine months as interim CEO at Reddit and 15 months as a venture partner and diversity chief at Oakland social-impact VC firm Kapor Capital, is CEO and co-founder of Project Include, a non-profit dedicated to improving diversity in tech.
