Sky has restructured its content team in the UK following the exit of Zai Bennett.
Meghan Lyvers has been promoted to Executive Director of Original Scripted and Phil Edgar-Jones has become Executive Director of Original Unscripted. Meanwhile, Poppy Dixon, the highly-rated docs chief, has been upped to Director of Documentaries & Factual.
There have also been a number of other changes to the teams under Cécile Frot-Coutaz.
As part of his remit as Executive Director, Content Strategy & Performance, responsible for our platform and channel performance, Jamie Morris will also take on responsibility for compliance teams led by Elizabeth Rowlands, Director of Content Compliance and Policy as well as commissioning of Sky Kids Originals led by Lucy Murphy, Director of Kids Content, UK&I. Helen Northrop, Director of Commercial Affairs for unscripted output, will now report to Caroline Cooper who will expand her remit to include Content, as COO Sky Studios and Content.
All business affairs, production management , systems and operations, and international financing activity across scripted and unscripted will be under a unified leadership. Katie Keenan, Group Director of Acquisitions will now report to Frot Coutaz.
Elsewhere, the Sky Studios’ Original Brands team has been expanded to cover all original scripted and ‘priority unscripted’ titles across Studios and Content, as well as awards. As Director of Original Brands and International Marketing, Studios and UK&Ireland Content, Harrison Kelly will lead the combined unit, with Luke Seraphin, Head of D&Ireland, Sky Original Programming, also reporting to Kelly.
The news was set out in a note from Frot Coutaz to staff this morning.
It comes after a number of exits including Bennett, who is soon moving to BBC Studios to run its productions arm, and Stephen van Rooyen, who left his role as Sky UK and Ireland CEO. Last week, Sky Studios hired Priscilla Parish to head up drama.
Upcoming for Sky the likes of its Day of the Jackal adaptation and Matt Smith-starrer The Death of Bunny Munro.
This morning Sky revealed Kelly Reilly (Yellowstone, Here) will star in a crime thriller, Under Salt Marsh, from writer, creator and executive producer Claire Oakley (Make Up).
Oakley will also helm the series as lead director, with Little Door Productions in association with Sky Studios producing and filming beginning later this year.
Under Salt Marsh is billed as a “gripping crime thriller set in the fictional Welsh town of Morfa Halen, a tight-knit community precariously nestled between towering mountains and a fast-encroaching sea that threatens its very existence.”
As a once-in-a-generation storm begins to gather far out at sea, former detective turned teacher Jackie Ellis (Reilly) discovers the body of her eight-year-old pupil, Cefin, seemingly drowned. The discovery sends shockwaves through the community, reviving the ghost of an unsolved cold case that rocked the town three years prior.
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