Piers Wenger Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Manori Ravindran International Editor With a week to go before kicking off the London Film Festival, the British Film Institute gathered the U.K.’s titans of cinema to toast the return of moviegoing and celebrate the next generation of filmmakers. The BFI’s Luminous gala took place at the swanky Londoner hotel in Leicester Square on Thursday evening (Sept. 29), where Variety had exclusive access. The event, which also featured the BFI and Chanel’s inaugural Filmmaker Awards, used to be a biannual bash, but was the first of its kind since the pandemic. The starry dinner convened around 400 guests, including actors Daisy Ridley, Ncuti Gatwa, Morfydd Clark, Rebel Wilson, Lily James, Malachi Kirby, Dame Joan Collins and Eddie Redmayne; directors Edgar Wright, Gurinder Chadha, Steve McQueen and Terry Gilliam; and producers including Working Title co-founder Eric Fellner, screenwriter Jemima Khan, and former BBC drama commissioner-turned-A24 international boss Piers Wenger.

EXCLUSIVE: At the 2021 Edinburgh TV Festival, the BBC and Netflix unveiled what the pair described as a landmark five-year disability partnership that would unearth a new generation of shows helmed by disabled talent.

The BBC has unveiled its biggest drama slate in years featuring a TV version of James Graham play Dear England starring Joseph Fiennes from The Crown producer Left Bank, Sex Education star Aimee Lou Wood‘s debut writing project and a Rebecca Hall-starrer from Poor Things maker Element.

BBC drama boss Lindsay Salt has candidly floated the notion that the industry has moved from “peak TV to peak caution,” as she details an ambition to “help reshape the drama landscape at a critical time.”

EXCLUSIVE: Euphoria producer A24 has turned to a series of self-published, TikTok-famous novels for its latest project out of the UK, Deadline understands.

The BBC’s controversial Jimmy Savile drama The Reckoning will be handed its long-awaited premiere in the autumn, while it has unveiled more cast and a first-look image.

EXCLUSIVE: A24 has quietly added another experienced exec to its steadily growing London office.

Twelve months ago, the UK industry drew a sharp intake of breath when Euphoria and Moonlight outfit A24 lured Piers Wenger and Rose Garnett to launch the studio’s London-based production division.

EXCLUSIVE: The first new A24 project to emerge since the studio’s record-breaking Oscar haul last week is international TV series Young Mungo, which is being adapted by Scottish-American author Douglas Stuart from his acclaimed novel.

BBC Drama Director Lindsay Salt has assembled her commissioning team with a triple hire including the EP on Candice Carty-Williams’ Champion and a former Doctor Who script editor.

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Max, the BBC and A24 have won the rights to co-develop one of the most highly-anticipated British debuts of the coming year – Slay in Your Lane scribe Yomi Adegoke’s The List.

EXCLUSIVE: Help and The End of the F***ing World producer Jenny Frayn has joined the BBC drama commissioning team on a temporary basis.

K.J. Yossman First look images have been revealed of the third and purportedly final season of crime drama “Happy Valley.” The six-part final season, made by Lookout Point for BBC One and BBC iPlayer in co-production with AMC Networks, will see Sarah Lancashire return as Sergeant Catherine Cawood and James Norton as Tommy Lee Royce. The first images show Lancashire sporting a bloody nose following a police raid while Royce, with a new look, is locked in his prison cell. Siobhan Finneran stars as Catherine’s sister Clare and Rhys Connah as her teenage grandson Ryan.

Endeavor Content’s newly-rebranded Fifth Season has signalled major international intentions with the hire of Ben Irving, the BBC’s former Acting Drama Director whose exec producer credits include His Dark Materials, Doctor Who and Gentleman Jack.

Margarethe von Trotta To Receive Lifetime Achievement Honor At The European Film Awards German filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 35th European Film Awards. von Trotta will receive the honor at a ceremony in Reykjavik, Iceland, on December 10 where she will be an honorary guest. Born in Berlin and raised in Düsseldorf, von Trotta started her career as an actress, in theatre and appeared in films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff before moving behind the camera in 1978 with The Second Awakening of Christa Klages, her solo debut as a director. In 1981, her film Marianne and Juliane about the “German Sisters” Christiane and Gudrun Ensslin won the Golden Lion in Venice as well as two German Film Awards and an Italian David di Donatello. Previous winners of the European Film Academy’s lifetime achievement award include Agnès Varda and Judi Dench.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Co-organized with CAA Media Finance, a new San Sebastian Festival Creative Investors’ Conference will see many of the good and great of the international film business descend on September’s fest edition to be pitched 10 higher-budget Spanish movies by their producers.  The Conference will run Sept.19-20. In a cosmopolitan lineup, titles pitched include international co-productions such as “Whalemen (At the Ends of the Earth)” from “Everest” director Baltasar Kormákur as well as the latest from “Amama” helmer Asier Altuna and “Raqa,” from Gerardo Herrero, an Academy Award wining producer for “The Secret in Their Eyes.”  

EXCLUSIVE: Rebecca Ferguson, series producer on BBC hits including The Responder and The Trial of Christine Keeler, has been snapped up by the new-look BBC drama commissioning team, Deadline can reveal.

The BBC has unveiled Lindsay Salt, Netflix UK scripted commissioner, as its next Director of Drama.

Sex Education producer Eleven is behind a British/Australian drama series about a group of expats in the 1950s for the BBC and Aussie SVoD Stan.

Conversations With Friends,” the upcoming series adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel, will premiere on May 15 on Hulu, BBC announced today, in addition to dropping a new trailer for the show.The series follows 21-year-old Frances (Alison Oliver), who, after three years, is still best friends with her ex-girlfriend, Bobbi (Sasha Lane). The two are inseparable, but at one of their poetry performances in Dublin, they meet Melissa (Jemima Kirke), an older writer who is taken by them.

Naman Ramachandran “Floodlights,” a feature-length single drama for BBC Two and BBC iPlayer tells the story of Andy Woodward, the former professional soccer player whose revelations about the sexual abuse he suffered as a youth player sent shockwaves throughout the industry. In 2016, Woodward went public about sexual abuse by his youth coach, Barry Bennell.

Naman Ramachandran BBC head of factual Tom McDonald is joining National Geographic in the newly created role of executive VP, global factual and unscripted content, reporting into Courteney Monroe, president of National Geographic Content.In the New York-based position, which he will take up in June, McDonald will work alongside Carolyn Bernstein, executive VP, scripted and feature documentaries. Reporting into McDonald will be Alan Eyres, senior VP, development and production, unscripted; Janet Vissering, senior VP, development and production, wildlife/natural history; and Michelle “Meesh” Upton, senior VP, production management.McDonald will be responsible for leading the development and production of all global unscripted series and specials across all programming categories and formats, which feed Disney Plus and National Geographic’s linear channels.

Naman Ramachandran BAFTA-winning writer and disability rights advocate Jack Thorne’s (“Help,” “His Dark Materials”) BBC drama “Best Interests” stars Michael Sheen (“Good Omens”) and Sharon Horgan (“Catastrophe”).Sheen and Horgan play married couple Nicci and Andrew, who have two daughters, Katie played by Alison Oliver (“Conversation with Friends”) and Marnie played by Niamh Moriarty (Thorne’s play “A Christmas Carol”). Marnie has a life-threatening condition.

Naman Ramachandran The BBC has revealed the first images from the keenly anticipated series adaptation of “Everything I Know About Love,” based on journalist, author and podcaster Dolly Alderton’s internationally bestselling memoir of the same name.Images have been revealed of Emma Appleton (Maggie), Bel Powley (Birdy), Marli Siu (Nell), Aliyah Odoffin (Amara) and Connor Finch (Street).“Everything I Know About Love” won a 2018 National Book Award for autobiography and was shortlisted for the 2019 Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year in the British Book Awards.The romantic comedy drama about female friendship provides an unflinching account of surviving your 20s.The seven-part series for BBC One will be directed by China Moo-Young (“Intergalactic,” “Harlots”) and produced by Working Title Television (“We Are Lady Parts,” “Hanna”), which is part of Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group. Set in a 2012 London house-share, with flashbacks to suburban adolescence in the early 2000s, the series is a deep dive into bad dates, heartaches and humiliations and asks whether platonic love can survive romantic love as the protagonists grow up.The series is executive produced by Jo McClellan for the BBC, Dolly Alderton, and Surian Fletcher-Jones, Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner for Working Title Television; and produced by Simon Maloney.

EXCLUSIVE: The BBC is developing A24 and Scott Rudin Productions’ adaptation of 2020 Booker Prize winner Shuggie Bain, Deadline can reveal.

A24, the indie studio behind “Moonlight” and “Lady Bird,” has tapped BBC executives Rose Garnett and Piers Wenger to oversee its international film and TV slate.The appointments are a major coup for A24 — and a heavy loss for the BBC — given Garnett and Wenger are the go-to execs in the U.K. for film and scripted television, respectively, anywhere the Beeb is concerned.Garnett most recently served as director of BBC Film, where she has overseen a slate of movies including “The Power of the Dog,” “The Nest” and “Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always.” Prior to that, she worked at Film4 where she helped produce the likes of “The Favourite,” “Room” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri.” Wenger served as director of BBC Drama, where he has overseen such hit television series as “I May Destroy You,” “Bodyguard,” “A Very English Scandal” and “Normal People.” Previously he was head of drama at Channel 4 where he commissioned “Humans,” “National Treasure,” and “The End of The F**cking World.”Both Garnett and Wenger will leave the BBC in May.

A24 has made two splashy international hires in the shape of BBC executives Rose Garnett and Piers Wenger who will join the ambitious U.S. distributor and producer to oversee their growing international film and TV slate.

K.J. Yossman Oscar Kennedy (“Ladhood”) and Jack Rowan (“Noughts + Crosses”) have joined new BBC comedy horror series “Wrecked.”Described as a “tense thriller” set aboard a cruise ship, the six-episode series is both comic with a “slice of slasher.” It is currently in production in Northern Ireland. Kennedy stars as Jamie, who infiltrates a cruise ship called The Sacramentum, in a bid to find his sister, who has gone missing after working aboard the ship on a previous tour.As Jamie is initiated into the 3,000-strong crew he meets the different factions it’s comprised of, from the theater workers to the “mafias” and low-paid staff, and their life of partying and excess.

EXCLUSIVE: Sherlock and Good Omens star Siân Brooke is to lead BBC One police thriller Blue Lights from the creators of The Salisbury Poisonings, with filming kicking off in Belfast.

The BBC has unveiled its next generation of drama commissioning and writing talent, three Assistant Commissioners including an Industry Script Exec along with 16 scribes for its Drama Room Writers 2021-22.

EastEnders reportedly hit a new low in the ratings at 2. 9million viewers.

BBC drama director Piers Wenger has stressed the “public interest” in the network’s controversial Jimmy Savile project as he showcased eight upcoming shows that “don’t fit into the convention of genre.”

Naman Ramachandran As Mipcom rolled on at Cannes, U.K.

Naman Ramachandran BBC drama is actively looking for shows from underrepresented groups, including Asian creatives and writers with disabilities, the broadcaster’s director of drama Piers Wenger said on Wednesday.Wenger also teased a major creative partnership with Netflix, which will involve people with disabilities that will be revealed on Thursday.“I’m particularly looking at the moment for stories from Asian, Southeast Asian writers.

I May Destroy You.The new show was announced as part of the BBC’s new slate of forthcoming TV projects, but drama controller Piers Wenger said the specifics of Coel’s new project remain very much under wraps.“It’s truly in Michaela’s head and it’s not for me to second guess that too much at this point.

Manori Ravindran International Editor“Queenie” author Candice Carty-Williams, “Everything I Know About Love” writer Dolly Alderton, “The Virtues” creator Shane Meadows and Michaela Coel are among the creatives delivering the next slate of dramas for the BBC.Piers Wenger, drama controller for the BBC, teased a new project with Coel on Tuesday during a showcase of the Beeb’s upcoming drama offerings, though details were sparse.