Gina Prince-Bythewood Trivia | 63 facts about the director

Gina Prince-Bythewood is an American film director and screenwriter. Her most recent film is the box office success “The Woman King”.

Let’s find out some trivia and facts about her life and career.

1. Her full name is Gina Maria Prince-Bythewood
2. She was born on June 10, 1969
3. She is an American film director and screenwriter
4. She is known for directing the films Love & Basketball (2000), Disappearing Acts (2000), The Secret Life of Bees (2008), Beyond the Lights (2014), The Old Guard (2020) and The Woman King (2022)
5. Prince-Bythewood was born in Los Angeles, California
6. She was adopted by Bob Prince, a computer programmer, and Maria Prince, a nurse, when she was 3 weeks old
7. Her adoptive father is white and her adoptive mother is of Salvadoran and German descent
8. She is Jewish
9. She grew up in the white middle-class neighborhood of Pacific Grove, California
10. She has four siblings through her adoptive family
11. In 1987, Prince-Bythewood graduated from Pacific Grove High School
12. She attended UCLA’s film school, where she also ran competitive track
13. At UCLA, she received the Gene Reynolds Scholarship for Directing and the Ray Stark Memorial Scholarship for Outstanding Undergraduates
14. She graduated in 1991
15. She sought out her birth mother around 2014, but it was “not a positive experience”
16. Her birth mother, who is white, was a teenager when she gave her up for adoption, because her family knew her child would be multiracial and they wanted her to have an abortion
17. After five years working in TV as a writer on shows like A Different World and South Central, Prince-Bythewood wrote her first film, 2000’s Love & Basketball
18. The film was based on Prince-Bythewood’s personal life and her experiences growing up
19. It was developed at the Sundance Institute’s directing and writing lab
20. The film won 12 awards and was nominated for three more
21. It won Best Film and Best Film Poster at the Black Reel Awards, and Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards
22. The film also grossed $27.7 million worldwide
23. Making it the ninth most popular basketball film in the United States at that time
24. She directed the feature film The Secret Life of Bees
25. The film was adapted from the best-selling book by Sue Monk Kidd
26. It was released by Fox Searchlight in October 2008
27. The film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and Urbanworld Film Festival that same year
28. In 2014, Prince-Bythewood directed Beyond the Lights, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw
29. Prince-Bythewood began work on the film in 2007, before work on 2008’s The Secret Life of Bees was completed
30. She struggled to find financing when the original production company, Sony, backed out after she insisted on casting Mbatha-Raw
31. The film premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival
32. Beyond the Lights, originally called Blackbird, is based on the Nina Simone song “Blackbird” from the record Nina Simone with Strings
33. Prince-Bythewood said: “That song really inspired the movie and inspired Noni’s story”
34. The main character’s story was loosely inspired by the lives of Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland
35. Prince-Bythewood also stated that the movie is filled with intense personal issues with some resulting from her own adoption and her fraught encounter with her birth mother
36. Prince-Bythewood did research with the assistance of a number of singers, including Alicia Keys
37. The story was also inspired by an experience seeing Keys play the song “Diary”
38. Elements of the film, especially the sexualization of female pop artists, act as a “critique of American media culture”
39. The film was shot in 29 days and cost $7 million
40. All of the key crew members on the film were women
41. Including costume designer Sandra Hernandez, production designer Cecilia Montiel, cinematographer Tami Reiker, and editor Teri Shropshire
42. Other collaborators were choreographer Laurieann Gibson (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj), hairstylist Kimberly Kimble (Beyoncé), and record producer The-Dream
43. In 2016 Prince-Bythewood announced her next project would be an adaptation of Roxane Gay’s novel An Untamed State
44. The project would be co-written by herself and Gay and would star Gugu Mbatha-Raw
45. In 2017 Prince-Bythewood, along with her husband Reggie Rock Bythewood, created the show Shots Fired for Fox
46. Later that year, Prince-Bythewood was announced as the director for Silver & Black, a movie based on Marvel Comics characters Silver Sable and Black Cat
47. She wrote the screenplay for the movie adaptation of the novel Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
48. The film had an estimated $12,498,674 worldwide box office take by March 2017 after its release date (January 21, 2017)
49. She directed the 2020 film adaptation of Greg Rucka’s The Old Guard for Netflix, starring Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne
50. She is the first mixed race woman to make a comic-book film
51. In 2020, she and her husband signed a deal with Touchstone Television to produce their output using the banner “Undisputed Cinema”
52. Prince-Bythewood directed the TriStar Pictures epic The Woman King
53. A feature inspired by true events that took place in the Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful states of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries
54. The Woman King tells the story of Nanisca (Viola Davis), general of the all-female military unit known as the Amazons, and her daughter, Nawi, who together fought the French and neighboring tribes who violated their honor, enslaved their people and threatened to destroy everything they’ve lived for
55. She also directed the first episode of ABC’s Women of the Movement
56. In March 2021, Prince-Bythewood took on a new role as Co-Chair of the Directors Guild of America African American Steering Committee (AASC)
57. Working alongside Director Jeffrey W. Byrd, Prince-Bythewood will be addressing needs of the African American members of the Guild such as job creation and career advancement in this new position
58. On August 26, It was announced that because of Prince-Bythewood’s commitments to other projects, she would not direct The Old Guard 2 and will be replaced by Victoria Mahoney
59. Prince-Bythewood will remain as producer on the film
60. In 1998 Prince-Bythewood married film director and writer Reggie Rock Bythewood, whom she met on the writing staff of A Different World
61. The couple have two sons, Cassius and Toussaint
62. They live in Southern California
63. Along with friends Mara Brock Akil, Sara Finney Johnson and Felicia D. Henderson, Prince-Bythewood endows The Four Sisters Scholarship

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