Fox Searchlight Pictures has launched Searchlight Television, making the company a 360-degree hub for creative talent and broadening the variety of projects produced under the Searchlight banner. Announcement of the new venture was made by Fox Searchlight Pictures presidents Nancy Utley and Steve Gilula.
David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield have been promoted to presidents of production for Film and Television effective immediately, adding Searchlight Television to their current responsibilities including all aspects of production for the company. All production executives will continue report to Greenfield and Greenbaum.
Searchlight Television will produce original material as well as utilize the studio’s rich library of feature films for adaptation in broadcast television, cable and streaming with forays into scripted series, limited series, documentaries and more.
Stacey Snider, chairman and CEO, Twentieth Century Fox Film, said, “The relationships that the Searchlight team forges with talent are deep and abiding. It only makes sense to extend these relationships into television so Searchlight can continue to tell great stories on every platform.”
Said Peter Rice, president, 21st Century Fox, and chairman and CEO, Fox Networks Group, “At such an exciting time for storytelling, all the Fox channels and studios are thrilled to be collaborating with Searchlight as it expands its unique brand of groundbreaking excellence into television.”
Greenbaum has been a senior executive at Fox Searchlight for eight years and Greenfield has been a senior executive at Fox Searchlight for 11 years. Together they have shepherded award-winning films that include Guillermo Del Toro’s Best Picture winner The Shape of Water, Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild, Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said, and Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ Battle of the Sexes. Searchlight’s upcoming slate includes director’s Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite starring Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman; Melissa McCarthy starring in Can You Ever Forgive Me? directed by Marielle Heller; David Lowery’s Old Man and the Gun starring Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek; Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård, Jason Clarke starring in The Aftermath from director James Kent; Dome Karukoski’s Tolkien starring Nicolas Hoult and Lily Collins; and Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy.
Fox Searchlight Pictures is a specialty film company that both finances and acquires motion pictures. It has its own marketing and distribution operations, and its films are distributed internationally by Twentieth Century Fox. Fox Searchlight Pictures is a unit of Twentieth Century Fox Film.
From Restoring To Hopefully Preserving Multi-Camera Categories At The Emmys
When Gary Baum, ASC won his fourth career Emmy Award earlier this month, it was especially gratifying in that the honor came in a category--Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Half-Hour Series--that had been restored thanks in part to a grass-roots initiative among cinematographers to drum up entries. Last year the category fell by the wayside when not enough multi-camera entries materialized.
In his acceptance speech, Baum appealed to the Television Academy to keep multi-camera categories alive. He later noted to SHOOT that editors also got their multi-camera recognition back in the Emmy competition this year. Baum hopes that after resurrecting multi-camera categories in 2024, such recognition will be preserved for 2025 and beyond.
A major factor in the decline of multi-camera submissions in 2023 was the move of certain children’s and family programming from the primetime Emmy competition to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (NATAS) Emmy ceremony. For DPs this meant that multi-camera programs last year were reduced to vying for just one primetime nomination slot in the more general Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour) category. It turned out that this single slot was filled in ‘23 by a Baum-lensed episode of How I Met Your Father (Hulu).
Fast forward to this year’s competition and Baum won for another installment of How I Met Your Father--”Okay Fine, It’s A Hurricane,” which turned out to be the series finale. Two of Baum’s Emmy wins over the years have been for How I Met Your Father, and there’s a certain symmetry to them. His initial win for How I Met Your Father was for the pilot in 2022. So he won Emmys for the very first and last... Read More