CHRYSALIS HATCH NEW GENRE-BASED DIVISIONS

CHRYSALIS Visual Entertainment are to re-structure their UK television production activities by merging their production companies and setting up new divisions specialising in entertainment, drama, sport and factual programmes.
A new production company, Chrysalis Entertainment Ltd, will group together the entertainment producers from Chrysalis-owned Assembly Film and Television, Tandem Television and Watchmaker Productions.
The new division, based in the Chrysalis building in Notting Hill, will be headed by Elaine Bedell, formerly Managing Director of Watchmaker Productions, who will become Managing Director of Chrysalis Entertainment. Bedell’s senior Sitcom Executive Producers will include Sue Birbeck and William Burdett-Coutts. Birbeck is producing Davina McCall’s new sitcom ‘Sam’s Game’ for ITV.
Bedell said: “We will be much stronger, and more powerfully creative than we were as smaller, separate outfits and I’m very much looking forward to working more collaboratively with my Chrysalis colleagues. We’re producing talked-about entertainment across the board, sitcom, chat shows and factual entertainment programmes, it’s a fantastic base on which to build. It’s my intention that Chrysalis Entertainment will shortly be leading the force in television entertainment.”
Head of Chrysalis TV Tony Moss will also join the Entertainment division as a key member of the Senior Executive team. He will bring with him Comedy Executive Gary Reich.
Executive Producer Karen Steyn will continue to oversee her portfolio of archive and entertainment programmes, including the returning series ‘The Unforgettable’ for ITV, and Jacques Peretti will executive produce experimental, innovative entertainment programmes under the brand, ‘Allied Forces’. Paola Colpani, formerly Deputy Managing Director of Watchmaker productions, will be Deputy Managing Director of Chrysalis Entertainment.
All drama output from Chrysalis will in future be produced by Chrysalis-owned Bentley productions based at Pinewood studios. Brian True-May, Managing Director of Bentley Productions has appointed Emma Kingsman-Lloyd as Script Editor and is developing new drama series alongside the established ‘Midsomer Murders’, starring John Nettles, now in production for its fifth series.
Islington-based Chrysalis Television, under Managing Director Neil Duncanson, will continue to specialise in sports programming through Chrysalis Sport, and infotainment programme through Chrysalis TV. (CD)