In February this year, Uber was rocked with a sexual harassment scandal that resulted in the eventual resignation of founder Travis Kalanick as CEO — and soon we’ll see it play out in theatres.
Susan J Fowler, the ex-Uber engineer who detailed her tumultuous tenure at the company in a blog post, is teaming up with production company Good Universe (The Disaster Artist, Bad Neighbours) and Hidden Figures screenwriter Allison Schroeder to bring the story to screen, Deadline reports.
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The film was pitched with the title Disruptors, and Deadline describes it as a mix between of Erin Brockovich and The Social Network.
Sexual harassment is currently a major talking point in Hollywood, as producers and directors have been accused by hordes of woman for abusing their positions of power.
In her post, Fowler described her stay at Uber as “slightly horrifying”. She detailed a time in which a manager insinuated they should have sex. When she reported the issue to HR, they agreed it was harassment, but as it was his first offense, he would only be issued a warning.
Fowler later discovered that several other women had reported the very same manager — some before she had arrived at the company, and some after her own report.
“When I joined Uber, the organisation I was part of was over 25% women. By the time I was trying to transfer to another … organisation, this number had dropped down to less than 6%,” she wrote. “Women were transferring out of the organisation, and those who couldn’t transfer were quitting or preparing to quit.”
As well as selling her life rights for the upcoming film, Fowler is also in the process of selling a book on the subject to publishers.
She recently gave her first interview after the debacle to The New York Times, in which she asserted that she had deleted the Uber app and that others should do the same.
Feature image: 5chw4r7z via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0, resized)
