Producer Janet Yang elected president of film academy

3 August 2022, 13:34

The 66-year-old becomes the first Asian American and the fourth woman to lead the organisation behind the Oscars.

Producer Janet Yang has been elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group’s board of governors announced, making her the first Asian American to lead the film academy.

Yang, the 66-year-old producer of The Joy Luck Club and The People Vs Larry Flynt, becomes the fourth woman to lead the organisation behind the Oscars.

Elected by the academy’s 54-member board, Yang succeeds outgoing president David Rubin, the veteran casting director, who is stepping down after three years due to term limits.

Along with academy chief executive Bill Kramer, the former Academy Museum director who was named to the post in June, Yang will be tasked with shepherding the academy through continued evolution in the film industry and with stabilising the Academy Awards, which in recent years have been beset by scandal and declining ratings.

The Queens-born Yang, a daughter of Chinese immigrants, has long been a significant figure in Hollywood’s Asian American community.

She has served on the academy’s board of governors since 2019 as one of three governors-at-large who were added following the #OscarsSoWhite scandal to help boost inclusion in the film academy.

Yang, an executive producer of the 2020 Oscar-nominated animated film Over The Moon, is just the second person of colour to be the academy’s president, following Cheryl Boone Isaacs.

She also co-chairs the academy’s Asian Affinity Group.

“Janet is a tremendously dedicated and strategic leader who has an incredible record of service at the academy,” Kramer said in a statement.

“She has been instrumental in launching and elevating several academy initiatives on membership recruitment, governance, and equity, diversity, and inclusion.”

After several years of declining ratings, March’s Oscars broadcast drew a larger audience than 2021’s show, but its 16.6 million viewers was still the second-smallest on record.