Do we like Paul Feig?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Real money and platform put behind LGBTQ+ and immigrant causes, nothing harmful of his own turned up, and just one speech people might grumble about.
Feig is best known for Bridesmaids and the 2016 all-female Ghostbusters, which copped an enormous online pile-on. He has said he thinks that backlash was tangled up with the ugly mood of the 2016 US election, saying that “Everyone was at a boiling point.” It is the formative stoush of his career, and he has been talking about it for years.
On the harm check, the record is a good one. In February 2025 he pledged $300,000 to the Trevor Project, Trans Lifeline and It Gets Better, telling Variety he could not “sit idly by” while his LGBTQ+ friends and colleagues were under pressure. That is real money going straight to trans and queer people in crisis, not a tweet.
He did the same for migrants. In mid-2025 he gave $100,000 to the National Immigration Law Center and called the treatment of immigrants “unconscionable and unacceptable,” according to TheWrap. Putting a six-figure cheque behind it is the sort of thing we want to see.
On the company he keeps, I found nothing linking him to anyone pushing harm. His recent work has been mainstream studio fare, and I didn't turn up any projects with the culture-war crowd. I only checked his recent projects loosely, so take that as a clean read, not an audit.
The recent thing is mostly about outrage. At Variety's Power of Law Breakfast in April 2026 he called unnecessary outrage “the biggest problem in our society right now” and used the Sweeney jeans ad as an example, saying she “had a contentious thing — but whatever.” Where you land depends on whether you hear that as a plea for perspective or as brushing off criticism, but there is nothing hateful in it.
He is also a loyal mate. Feig publicly defended Blake Lively during her legal fight with Justin Baldoni, calling her “an amazing collaborator” and outrage over the drama “the most boring emotion humans have these days.” He wasn't a party to the case, which Lively and Baldoni settled in May 2026, shortly before the trial was due to start.