Sigourney Weaver's character was written as a man. It wasn't until late in pre-production that it was decided that the studio executive role could actually be a woman instead. Still, no line was re-written for the gender change, although at one point she politely kisses a male associate at work. Even the name Lenny was kept.
In this movie, Sigourney Weaver plays a television network president. Weaver's father, Sylvester L. Weaver Jr. (aka Pat Weaver), was for many years president of NBC; this movie's writer/director, Jake Kasdan, was a producer and writer on Freaks & Geeks (1999), which aired on NBC (albeit many years after Pat Weaver's retirement).
PROLOGUE: "Each winter the major television networks commission hundreds of scripts for television pilots. Each Spring a small fraction of those scripts are produced. Of those produced pilots approximately one quarter are picked up and put on the falls schedule. The rest never see the light of day. This is a story of one pilot."