Netflix has slated season two of the wildly popular series Jessica Jones to air in 2017, although it is looking more like 2018. Pretty much all we know abut season two is that Krysten Ritter will return as the titular character (a moment of silence for the absence of the transcendent David Tennant). Obviously one of the most notable things about the series is that it portrayed a strong, independent female superhero who fought her own demons without needing a savior character to rush to her aid. In a huge show of support for a female led project, showrunner Melissa Rosenberg announced last week that each of the 13 episodes of season two will be directed by women.

All 13 episodes of the second season of “Marvel’s Jessica Jones” will be directed by women, according to executive producer and showrunner Melissa Rosenberg.

Rosenberg discussed the all-female directing roster during her panel at Transforming Hollywood 7: Diversifying Entertainment, a conference held Friday at University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Rosenberg said that in the second season of the superhero show, she had wanted to increase the number of female directors — a goal that Marvel was completely on board with, she noted. Given how in-demand many women directors are these days, she and her fellow producers had set their sights on booking women first, she said, and contracting male directors later in the pre-production process.

But then someone else involved in the production — she didn’t specify who — floated the idea of booking only women as directors. Rosenberg was honest about the fact that she hadn’t contemplated that concept prior to that conversation, but she said she quickly jumped at the opportunity.

When it comes to behind-the-scenes personnel, hiring an inclusive array of people was “a conscious decision and it’s very important that showrunners do that,” she said.

[From Variety]

Ava DuVernay is also using female directors exclusively for her series, Queen Sugar. Obviously this is amazing and sends a great message to both the industry and the fans. I also think it is important to recognize that this has Marvel’s full support. I will be unpopular for admitting this, but I was really just okay with JJ’s first season. I really wanted to like it. However, my problems were with the writing, both story-telling and consistency. I love the female empowerment and voice of the series and was happy to see it get a second season. I honestly think the show will be improved by having all female directors to strengthen it’s leads’ voices.

Once again, Netflix is taking the lead on inclusion with Hulu and Amazon right behind them. The Huffington Post points out that reason streaming networks can break so many molds is because they are free from the formulaic rules that network TV still strangles itself with. The problem is, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” only applies if “it” isn’t broken and I think we have all seen that network TV is fairly broken. Because the streaming companies have their own distribution, they are bound to no one but themselves. Isn’t it nice to know that once those constraints are lifted, these companies diversified instead of falling into the same old comfortable rut? Hmm. It almost seems like there is an object lesson there…

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