Screenplay software adds tool to assess a script's inclusiveness

In an update announced Thursday, Final Draft — software that writers use to format scripts — said it will now include a proprietary “Inclusivity Analysis” feature, allowing filmmakers “to quickly assign and measure the ethnicity, gender, age, disability or any other definable trait of the characters,” including race, the company said in a statement.

It also will enable users to determine if a project passes the Bechdel Test, measuring whether two female characters speak to each other about anything other than a man. The Final Draft tool, a free add-on, was developed in collaboration with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media at Mount Saint Mary’s University, which has been at the forefront of studying the underrepresentation of women on screen.

In a statement, Geena Davis said the update “will make it easier for readers, writers and creative execs to more easily use a gender and intersectionality lens when evaluating scripts prior to greenlight, casting and production.”

The Final Draft feature comes almost a year after similar programs were instituted in other screenplay apps, starting with Highland software. The idea then came from Christina Hodson, a screenwriter (“Bumblebee,” the forthcoming “Batgirl,”), who reasoned that if scripts were the blueprint for blockbusters and indies alike, “it made sense to me that we can do a lot ourselves, before they even leave our desk.” She approached software makers, who developed and released tools in a matter of weeks.

Final Draft, the industry leader, took a more measured approach, Scott McMenamin, the company’s president, said in an email. “We just wanted to make sure we got this right,” he wrote, “which is why we didn’t release it right out of the gate” with the most recent update, Final Draft 11, in September.

“We consulted with showrunners, writing staffs, guilds” and advocates for accurate depictions of the disabled, he said. “Their perspectives were integral to the development of the feature,” which is meant to be used when scripts are in process, as well as when they are finished.

“Our goal,” McMenamin added, “is to give the writer (or development executive, producer, or anyone else involved in the filmmaking process) maximum flexibility to measure character traits without imposing our own definitions on what is measured.”