The professionals featured in Variety’s 2026 Women’s Impact Report navigated yet another crazy year in show business. Despite the mergers, layoffs and the ongoing transformation brought by AI, the box office returned with a bang and small-screen series captured imaginations. The resilience and determination to create, execute and deliver great entertainment by this year’s honorees remains the engine of show business.By Mya Copeland, Isabella Farina, Tanya Fedak, Carole Horst, Cynthia Littleton, Pat Saperstein, Michael Schneider, Jazz Tangcay Since joining Warner Bros. in 2022, Abdy has led an impressive slate that includes “One Battle After Another,” “Weapons” and “Sinners” — earning 11 Academy Awards, tying the record for the most wins by a studio, and leading the industry with 30 nominations overall.
With 16 nominations, “Sinners” became the most nominated film in Academy history. Upcoming is the buzzy “Digger,” directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Tom Cruise, and the capstone to the “Dune” trilogy, “Dune: Part Three.” This year, North Road Company developed the North Road Films label, with Adelson at the helm. In addition to overseeing strategy at the company, she also identifies both emerging and established talent.
She was instrumental in bringing Kane Parsons and “Backrooms” to A24, helping it become one of the year’s biggest breakouts. She’s spent the year working with recently signed Ed Sheeran and Laufey, and has continued to work closely with Olivia Rodrigo as she created and launched the Daisy Chain Fields festival. That festival has raised millions of dollars for nonprofits centered around women and girls.
Together, Orsi and Gravitt have overseen such hits as “The White Lotus,” “The Last of Us,” “House of the Dragon,” “Euphoria,” “Hacks” and the anticipated “Harry Potter.” Orsi is most proud of the “Game of Thrones” spinoff, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” which was produced at a low budget number, received strong reviews, a large audience and an Emmy nomination for drama series.App she can’t live without: Gravitt can be found clocking her runs on Strava. Mirojnick and her team designed and produced 5,300 costumes, handcrafting thousands of pieces. De Jong scouted locations around the world, finding a fifth-century castle in Italy, perched approximately 1,030 feet above sea level, which became the film’s Ithaca.
She also designed multiple Trojan horses, each standing approximately 35 feet tall. Troy, by the numbers, was an incredible accomplishment — it covered more than 2.5 acres, large enough to accommodate 2,000 extras and more than 60 structures. Editor Lame pieced it all together, cutting 2 million feet of Imax film to anchor the story in the emotionally tortured mind of the hero, Odysseus.Global passage: De Jong says that “designing ‘The Odyssey’ across six countries, managing each country’s art department simultaneously, all the while traveling with carry-on only” stands out among her many production achievements.Detail-oriented: “We were not trying to make armor look old.
We were trying to make it look used, as if it was pulled from the earth,” Mirojnick explains. Bajaria oversees an annual content budget that grew to $20 billion this year to reach a global audience of one billion viewers. With such global hits as “Bridgerton,” “Stranger Things,” “His & Hers,” “Emily in Paris,” “I Will Find You” and an Oscar (“KPop Demon Hunters”), Netflix continues to help inform pop culture.
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