Amazon Studios’ Jennifer Salke & Vernon Sanders On ‘Maisel’s Emmy Farewell, ‘Jury Duty’ & ‘Wednesday’s Breakthrough And Upcoming Slate
13.07.2023 - 05:47
/ deadline.com
Amazon Studios’ 2023 Emmy performance is probably best encapsulated by the Outstanding Comedy Series category. There is the veteran, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which years ago landed Prime Video’s first Best Series Emmy win. It is ending its five-season run in style with 14 nominations, including Outstanding Comedy Series.
There is the upstart, surprise Outstanding Comedy Series nominee Jury Duty which put Amazon’s up-and-coming AVOD service Freevee on the awards map with four total noms, breaking new ground for ad-supported streamers.
And then there is Netflix’s Outstanding Comedy Series nominee Wednesday, produced by MGM, which has been fully integrated into Amazon Studios following the venerable Hollywood studios’ acquisition by Amazon.
The combined Amazon MGM Studios scored 68 Primetime Emmy nominations today, including nine for Daisy Jones & The Six, six (all in crafts categories) for the The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) and three for Swarm.
“We are so proud of the Freevee team and the Jury Duty team. It’s such a bold idea, and it could have gone wrong in so many ways,” Amazon Studios’ Head of Television Vernon Sanders said. “This has been a word-of-mouth show. It just blew up over TikTok and to this day, people are finding the show and loving it.”
Speaking of the team at Freevee, whose business model is largely built on programming at a modest cost, “they’ve just done a miraculous job with tight budgets, making things that resonate,” Sanders said. “The quality of the content from Freevee really stands out.”
Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke praised Head of AVOD Programming Lauren Anderson, whom both Salke and Sanders had mentored at NBC, and her talent relationships.
“We operate as one big creative