2024 YEAR IN REVIEW for HONEY CHILE, An Independent Media & Production Company

By Georgette Pierre and Felicia Pride

Part of the HONEY CHILE team at NAACP Image Award Nominee Brunch

OVERVIEW

What a time 2024 has been for HONEY CHILE! Despite all the turmoil in Hollywood and the world, surprisingly, 2024 was our most successful year yet as we were launching, streamlining, and building our community.

HONEY CHILE is an independent and completely bootstrapped media + production company that develops and creates work by, for, or about Black women 40+. Honeys, as we like to call them.

We were founded and are run by Felicia Pride, a TV writer/producer and award-winning filmmaker, alongside a small but mighty Hive of Black women — our core team + side hustle queens.

We believe in the lofty vision to embolden Honeys (and Honeys-in-training) to live vibrant lives and wield their influence through the irrepressible power of storytelling and mediamaking.

Here’s what had us excited this year:

FILM / TV

• It was announced that we’re adapting Tia Williams’ NYT bestselling book SEVEN DAYS IN JUNE for Amazon. Felicia is serving as Executive Producer, Writer, and Showrunner.
• We were selected to be the production company of record for a documentary based on an iconic media brand. Our Head Honey will be co-directing the project as well.
• We released LOOK BACK AT IT online. It’s our proof of concept for a feature film that will serve as Felicia’s directorial debut. As part of the release, we:
• Received this amazing writeup in Shadow & Act
• Held a virtual watch party with our entire cast
• Selected to screen at the Closing Night of the Maryland Film Festival, which was quite the honor given that the film is based in and we filmed it in Baltimore, Felicia’s hometown.
• Early next year, LOOK BACK AT IT will be featured in a film series based on the Mickalene Thomas All About Love exhibit at the Barnes Foundation, which was curated by BlackStar Film Festival founder Maori Karmael Holmes. tender, our first short film was also featured in the film series earlier this year.

AUDIO + BOOKS

• Our first podcast, CHILE, PLEASE was nominated for a second time for an NAACP Image award.
• On the heels of that nomination, we launched our new HONEY CHILE thang, IT’S GOOD OVER HERE Podcast — A celebration of how good it can be on the other side of 40 — across career, life and love. Our lineup has featured Honeys blazing trails of their own including ANGEL LAKETA MOORE (the star of our short film LOOK BACK AT IT), becoming a powerhouse creator after 40, and DANYEL SMITH, award winning journalist and author, navigating new adventures in her 50s and saying the quiet things out loud!
• And we’re just getting started! Upcoming guests include actress and creative entrepreneur, CASSANDRA FREEMAN, who plays Aunt Viv on BEL AIR, self-care and pro-aging coach, CANDICE DENISE OWENS (convo dropping 12/31), bespoke furniture designer NICOLE CROWDER and more.

Watch the trailer below.

• Earlier in the year, as part of our ongoing educational efforts to help historically excluded storytellers tell their stories and thrive creatively and professionally, we launched The Creative Cut Up Podcast — a lively and honest space for storytellers that sits at the intersection of craft, business, and creative freedom. Hosted by Felicia Pride and co-hosts Driadonna Roland and Georgette Pierre.
• We launched HONEY CHILE’S publishing arm by re-releasing the rebranded Creative Comeback Workbook by Felicia. Black Enterprise Magazine recently featured the book in their Holiday Gift Guide.
• We also produced two beautiful script books for our short films tender and LOOK BACK AT IT, that include the script, an original essay from the writer / director, and never-seen-before behind the scenes photos.

DIGITAL + COMMUNITY

• Growing our YouTube channel is a priority for us going into 2025, so we were excited to be monetized on the platform and be accepted into their Partner Program.
• We launched the HONEY Culture Club — a book club, film club, and more rolled up into one. It’s an opportunity to go beyond recommendations or roundups. We’ll dig into a project together and explore the story and its themes in a more meaningful way. We’re excited to continue watching, reading, and discussing more content we love as a community!

• And we’ve been beefing up our offerings for The HONEYCOMB, our storytelling studio powered by Patreon. A Honey hangout. A place for the stuff that matters to us. A space to talk that Honey talk, while moving in our purpose: to center the stories and lives of Black women 40 and over.
• Here are some of the great pieces we’ve published this year on The HONEYCOMB:
  FIRST PERSON: Reflections On Turning 40 & My Personal Honey Starter Kit
  The HONEY Fund AMA Recap: Y’all Asked Anything. Felicia Answered
  HONEY TO HONEY: 60+ Pieces of Advice From 50+ Honeys
  EXCLUSIVE: Angel Laketa Moore on How She Refills Her Tank
  The HONEY Culture Club Interview: Director Tina Mabry on Perseverance
  The Black Women Characters Honeys Really Want to See On Screen
  HONEY to HONEY: On Dating Younger

EDUCATION

• Through our former educational platform, The Create Daily, we launched several courses including a Make Your Short Film Intensive and an Adapting IP class, which are now part of our Build Bundle package (more on this below).
• We made the difficult decision to shut down The Create Daily, which Felicia founded in 2012 as a resource for historically excluded storytellers, because we realized that we were spread thin trying to serve two different brands.
• So we streamlined our educational offerings into The Sweet Build, which is designed to build a force of storytellers who want to make great work, serve their audiences, secure the bag, and change the game. We want to help shape a new artist-entrepreneur who will build their own ecosystems.
• Here are some of our recent issues of The Sweet Build:
  Let’s talk about pitching
  It’s all about the work
  29 ways to become the CEO of your creative career
  30 ways that fear stops you from creating
• As part of The Sweet Build, we launched the Build Bundle — our comprehensive collection of classes, workshops, and exclusive content that includes over 20 hours of video and unlimited lifetime access.

FUNDING

• We’re thrilled to have finally launched the HONEY Fund, an audacious goal that will give us the freedom to tell stories, our way. For the last four years, Felicia has personally financed HONEY CHILE.
• Fun fact from a Women in Film study: 66.7% of the female entrepreneurs invest six- to seven-figures of their own money to fund their screen industry business, whereas only 20% of the male entrepreneurs invested as high of sums.
• Felicia has been trying to crack a model of patronage for the cinematic and media arts. Is there a way for audiences and entities to be empowered to support what they want to see in a systematic way? Out of this, The HONEY Fund was born.
• The HONEY Fund is a fiscally-sponsored (all donations are tax write-offs) fundraising effort that would allow HONEY CHILE to fund a slate of independent projects across audio, digital, film, and TV that centers on historically excluded voices, stories, collaborators, and audiences.

• The HONEY Fund will allow us to make independent film, television, and audio projects; market projects through impact campaigns, and develop Honey creators through artist development.
• And we’re encouraged about this possibly being a model for other historically excluded storytellers.

You don’t need permission when you have capital.

Together, we can build our own table and throw a banquet where everyone eats. Learn more and become Honey Champion today.

• As part of the need for conversations around doing things differently, our Head Honey wrote this Medium piece, TV OFF: HOLLYWOOD’S GOING THROUGH IT. TIME TO DIY, INNOVATE, AND EMBRACE NEW MODELS, that is a rallying call for artists to take back control.
• We held an AMA for Giving Tuesday where Felicia answered a range of questions on Hollywood, making work, and building sustainable creative careers.

HEAD HONEY

Our Head Honey / CEO Felicia Pride was the busiest she’s ever been this year. She was writing her behind off, while being staffed in a writer’s room, and keeping the trains running at HONEY CHILE.

And through all of that, she:

• Sold a TV show
• Setup a TV show at a studio
• Turned in TWO pilot scripts and rewrites on both
• Turned in two revised scripts for a series she has in development
• Was sent to format on one of her TV series
• Turned in a series format, outline, and first script for a limited series
• Pitched on a major feature film project; delivered an amazing pitch
• Turned in a studio feature and its rewrite
• Turned in a rewrite on another studio feature which now has a director attached
• Staffed in an amazing writer’s room and is now a Co-Executive Producer
• Wrote and produced 1 1/2 episodes of television
• Completed the WGA Showrunner Training Program
• Gave a keynote at Tulane University about gender equity in storytelling
• Was featured by Essence for being in conversation with Honey director Tina Mabry during the Essence Film Festival

WRAP-UP

We’re heavy in a planning season for 2025. We’ve hired our first Chief of Staff and are looking to remain lean and mean.

We’re GEEKED about the new year. 2025 is going to be a BIG year for us because we’re claiming it so.

Because we don’t bet on any industry. We bet on ourselves and the dynamic community we serve.

And we know none of this can be done alone.

We’re always looking for like-minded partners, collaborators, and other entities to work with. If that’s you, get in touch!

And here are other ways to TAP IN with us:

• Become a HONEY Champion by donating to the HONEY Fund, our tax-deductible fundraising effort.
• Contact us for strategy, consulting, and producing services for brands + campaigns.
• Reach out to us about sponsorship and advertising packages to reach our robust community of Honeys and Honeys-in-Training.
• Dig into our new podcast, IT’S GOOD OVER HERE. Rate, subscribe, and review!
• Get exclusive and bonus content by joining our Patreon community THE HONEYCOMB, for as little as $2 a month.
• Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter, A TASTE OF HONEY.
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can watch LOOK BACK AT IT and tender among other videos (with lots more to come in 2025!)
• Follow us on the socials, and holla at us! We’re @itshoneychile on Instagram, TikTok, and Threads. We’re also on LinkedIn.

We’re ever grateful for the ongoing support and encouragement from Honeys, those who love us, allies, audiences, partners, and folk who understand what we’re trying to do.

Thank you and cheers to an intentional, dynamic, and pleasurable 2025!

The HONEY CHILE Team