Alexander Rodnyansky Producing TV Series About the Porn Industry (EXCLUSIVE)
By Leo Barraclough
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Alexander Rodnyansky, producer of the Oscar-nominated films “Leviathan” and “Loveless,” has set prize-winning Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo to develop and direct “Everybody’s Woman,” a drama series centering on a woman working in the porn industry. Kata Weber will write and develop the series with Mundruczo.
Mundruczo and Weber have previously collaborated on several projects, including the winner of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section in 2014, “White God,” which revolved around a revolt against mankind by stray dogs. Their followup, “Jupiter’s Moon,” premiered in competition at Cannes last year. The pair are also attached to Sony Pictures’ science-fiction movie “Inherit the Earth,” as Variety reported in August .
The first season of “Everybody’s Woman” will focus on a young woman who initially becomes a porn actress out of financial necessity. It will follow her “trials, disillusionment, and rise through the ranks as she leaves performing behind for power and longevity in an industry that typically renders women powerless and disposable,” according to a statement by Rodnyansky’s team. “Her journey will expose the changing attitudes towards women in an industry built around the exploitation of the female form.” The series will be set primarily in Budapest, Hungary, but will be chiefly shot in English, with some Hungarian and other languages included, given the global nature of the biz.
Rodnyansky, who collaborated with Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev on “Leviathan” and “,” said: “The exploitation of women is bigger than pornography. We’re looking at it through the spectrum of this industry, but it’s a universal concept, and it’s changing. Our goal, first and foremost, is to tell a personal story about a woman fighting to reclaim her power.”
Rodnyansky called Mundruczo a “gifted director whose vision and experience will be the driving force of our project.” And he said Weber’s perspective “as a woman and a storyteller is critical to navigating this controversial topic with grace.”
Added Weber: “It’s important to see this changing world through female eyes. It’s easy to judge this industry, which, at its core, is mass-market exploitation of women’s bodies. Seeing it for all its nuances and rapid evolution is a more challenging, and more interesting, task for me as a storyteller.”
Mundruczo said: “Like filmmaking in general, the pornography industry has changed a lot over the past decade, and in many ways reflects and even perpetuates changing attitudes towards women. I’m excited to work with Kata and Alexander to explore these untold stories.”
Rodnyansky’s new L.A.-based development banner AR Content recently announced “Debriefing the President,” a firsthand account of the interrogation of Saddam Hussein, to be directed by Ziad Doueiri (“The Insult”), as well as a Kevin Macdonald-produced documentary about the refugee crisis in Europe that preceded the Holocaust and World War II.
Mundruczo is repped by CAA and Novo, Weber by United Agents.
