Susan Sarandon: Ryan Murphy's Feud examines Hollywood gender inequality

Susan Sarandon is spilling a few details on Feud, the new TV project she’s making with Ryan Murphy and Jessica Lange.

Speaking on the shores of southern France at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, Sarandon tells PEOPLE and EW she’s excited to work with Lange on the FX project because it offers contemporary commentary on gender inequality in the film industry through the lens of Hollywood’s past. The anthology series’ first season will be a dramatic retelling of the tumultuous real-life relationship between Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? costars Bette Davis (Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (Lange).

“In the examination of Hollywood through the time of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, the question is whether or not things have actually changed that much,” she says. “Do we pit women against women? Do the studios still have more power than individual women?”

The series, also starring Alfred Molina, Judy Davis, and Stanley Tucci, marks yet another collaboration between Murphy and FX, as the network previously aired his Nip/Tuck from 2003-2010, and currently airs both American Horror Story and American Crime Story. With Murphy’s lengthy TV career preceding him, Sarandon says she’s impressed with the Feud creator’s work, and she looks forward to putting many more women in the director’s chair with their upcoming collaboration.

“Ryan’s doing a great thing, because he’s having half of [the episodes] directed by women, so his company now will go out of its way to encourage women to direct,” Sarandon says.

Feud is set to premiere on FX in 2017.