Women Are Leading the Pack at Wolf Entertainment
variety.comEmily Longeretta When Dick Wolf kicked off the “One Chicago” world on NBC in 2012 with “Chicago Fire” — a spinoff of the “Law & Order” universe — it was a bit of a boys’ club.Derek Haas, Matt Olmstead and Michael Brandt led “Fire” as showrunners; less than two years later, “Chicago P.D.” premiered with Olmstead at the head.
In 2015 came the third leg of the franchise with “Chicago Med” under Andrew Dettmann, Andrew Schneider and Diane Frolov. Dettmann exited after Season 1 and Schneider and Frolov, a married couple, have led it ever since.Now, women are at the helm of all three shows.For many years, Frolov was the first female showrunner on the franchise.
Although they’d never met Wolf before, when they first sat down together, they pitched a pilot idea and he set up a meeting with the network. “The next day, we got a call from our agent, which we assumed would be about the pilot,” she says. “Instead, our agent told us Dick would like us to come and run ‘Chicago Med.’ That was seven years ago.”Little did she know that by 2022 all three “Chicago” series would have a woman in the top spot, but all three have very different experiences in how they got there.Writer Gwen Sigan began with the “old school climb the ladder” method at Wolf Entertainment, starting off as Olmstead’s assistant when he was running both “P.D.” and “Fire.”“He’s one of my favorite writers to this day, and he’s also kind and was a great mentor — he staffed me on ‘P.D.’ and gave me nothing but opportunity.
And I’ve been here since,” says Sigan, who took over Rick Eid’s role as showrunner at the beginning of Season 9 of the police procedural in 2021. “It’s never lost on me how insane it is to be working with this many people who are this good.
Read more on variety.com
