2 months ago
EXCLUSIVE: The BBC has raided Disney for nan exec shaper down A Thousand Blows and Rivals.
Jonny Richards, who is Disney+’s Director, Scripted Originals successful EMEA, will subordinate nan BBC play commissioning squad this summer.
He has been pinch Disney for almost 5 years, moving successful a increasing commissioning squad and building retired a slate featuring Steven Knight’s boxing play A Thousand Blows, Jilly Cooper adjustment Rivals, Jeff Pope’s Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and Sean Bean-starrer Shardlake. He was precocious promoted arsenic EMEA contented main Angela Jain gets group to scatter nan cash connected European originals. He antecedently ran improvement for Normal People maker Element Pictures and utilized to activity for Channel 4.
Richards joins Lindsay Salt’s BBC play commissioning team, which has caller credits including The Night Manager, Lord of nan Flies and Richard Gadd’s upcoming bid Half Man. Salt precocious talked strategy successful a Deadline profile, revealing really she is trying to subvert assemblage expectations. Landing a apical Disney exec isn’t a bad adjacent measurement and is simply a uncommon illustration of a commissioner jumping from a streamer to a broadcaster. Salt herself moved from Netflix to nan BBC.
Richards will subordinate successful a fewer months. His assignment comes a fewer weeks after nan tragic decease of Peaky Blinders commissioning editor Danielle Scott-Haughton. Tanya Qureshi, meanwhile, recently left Salt’s team to tally Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap retired of nan UK. Richards is not a like-for-like replacement for either.
Salt said: “We consciousness incredibly lucky to person Jonny joining nan BBC. Highly respected crossed nan manufacture and pinch a wealthiness of acquisition and credits nether his belt, Jonny knows what makes world people play and will beryllium a awesome summation to our team.”
Richards added: “It’s a existent privilege to beryllium joining Lindsay and nan superb squad astatine nan BBC – an organisation whose breadth and value of play has had a lasting power connected me. I person loved my clip astatine Disney and consciousness incredibly fortunate to person worked pinch specified awesome colleagues, led by Angela and Lee. I’m excited to collaborate pinch our industry’s outstanding organization of writers and producers astatine nan BBC, to find stories and voices which resonate with, and entertain, audiences crossed nan UK.”
