Alkemy X has added veteran producer and development executive Glen Freyer as sr. VP TV & digital content. Freyer will work alongside EVP TV & digital content, Andy Singer, atop the company’s rapidly expanding Originals division. Freyer will develop scripted and unscripted content for both linear and digital platforms, including broadcast, streaming, web and branded. Freyer joins a team that is already leveraging Alkemy X’s success in original content and VFX into the emerging fields of web series and branded entertainment.
Freyer has held senior roles with Loud TV, Bobby Flay’s Rock Shrimp Productions, Atlas Media and TruTV/Court TV. He has been consulting with Alkemy X for several months and has already played a key role developing and producing recent projects for Google, Discovery Networks and other clients. With 20 years in the industry, Freyer has personally executive produced or produced more than 800 episodes of network television and created and/or sold an additional 350 episodes. His credits include the hit Travel Channel series Hotel Impossible and Investigation Discovery’s Stalked: Someone’s Watching.
Alkemy X’s Originals division produced the long-running Food Network series Restaurant: Impossible, Velocity’s Unique Rides and Fuse’s recent The 212. Alkemy X is currently producing a project for TLC slated to debut in 2019 and is actively developing new series for Discovery, Food Network and others.
At Rock Shrimp Productions, Freyer served as EVP of development, working with celebrity chef Bobby Flay. He spent six years as SVP for development at Atlas Media and three years as the sr. buyer for Court TV/TruTV. Freyer was also a development executive and executive producer at 20th Television’s Fox Lab, and began his television career as a writer/producer on the hit reality series Blind Date. Freyer has also sold numerous screenplays over the years to Fox 2000, Icon Films and Shoreline Entertainment, among others.
Rom-Com Mainstay Hugh Grant Shifts To The Dark Side and He’s Never Been Happier
After some difficulties connecting to a Zoom, Hugh Grant eventually opts to just phone instead.
"Sorry about that," he apologizes. "Tech hell." Grant is no lover of technology. Smart phones, for example, he calls the "devil's tinderbox."
"I think they're killing us. I hate them," he says. "I go on long holidays from them, three or four days at at time. Marvelous."
Hell, and our proximity to it, is a not unrelated topic to Grant's new film, "Heretic." In it, two young Mormon missionaries (Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher) come knocking on a door they'll soon regret visiting. They're welcomed in by Mr. Reed (Grant), an initially charming man who tests their faith in theological debate, and then, in much worse things.
After decades in romantic comedies, Grant has spent the last few years playing narcissists, weirdos and murders, often to the greatest acclaim of his career. But in "Heretic," a horror thriller from A24, Grant's turn to the dark side reaches a new extreme. The actor who once charmingly stammered in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and who danced to the Pointer Sisters in "Love Actually" is now doing heinous things to young people in a basement.
"It was a challenge," Grant says. "I think human beings need challenges. It makes your beer taste better in the evening if you've climbed a mountain. He was just so wonderfully (expletive)-up."
"Heretic," which opens in theaters Friday, is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers of "A Quiet Place." In Grant's hands, Mr. Reed is a divinely good baddie — a scholarly creep whose wry monologues pull from a wide range of references, including, fittingly, Radiohead's "Creep."
In an interview, Grant spoke about these and other facets of his character, his journey... Read More