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Amazon Studios Wants Half of Its Creative Teams to Be Diverse By 2024

Amazon Studios on Wednesday announced several goals to boost diversity on its series and films, as streamers expand their reach and aim to reflect their audiences worldwide.

{snip} Amazon Studios said for films or series with three or more people in above-the-line roles, it aims for at least 30% of positions to be filled by women and people from underrepresented ethnic or racial groups. The studio said it plans to increase this to 50% by 2024.

Other goals include hiring actors whose identities align with the characters they are portraying; and having at least one role representing someone from the LGBTQ community, a person with a disability, and three underrepresented race, ethnic or cultural groups on each production. In addition, productions are asked to seek bids from at least one woman-owned business and at least one minority-owned business, Amazon said.

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The inclusion efforts align with a larger effort by Hollywood to become more diverse in light of the police killing of George Floyd last year. Floyd’s death sparked a social movement that put pressure on companies to hire more people of color and women.

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The company, a division of the e-commerce giant, said it would give productions a “report template” for documentation on how they fare with the policy. {snip}

“We wanted to move beyond good intentions to creating mechanisms that hold us accountable to a high bar,” said Latasha Gillespie, executive head of diversity, equity and inclusion at Amazon Studios {snip}

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