Jennifer Salke, president of NBC Entertainment, is moving over to Amazon Studios as its chief, filling the void left when Roy Price was ousted from that position in October over sexual harassment allegations.
Salke will report to Jeff Blackburn, Amazon sr. VP of business development and digital entertainment. Among those reporting to Salke will be Amazon COO Albert Cheng who’s overseen the studio since Price’s departure.
Salke, who first joined NBC Entertainment in summer of 2011, has had a key hand in varied successes there, including the arrival of This is Us as a major primetime hit for the network. She will remain at NBC for an interim stretch so as to facilitate a smooth transition there.
Salke will bring strong relationships with the creative community to Amazon Studios. She’s also been involved in efforts to bring new talent into that community, having teamed with lauded director Lesli Linka Glatter to spearhead NBC’S Female Forward initiative which aims to give women directors a pipeline into scripted televison. Per the program, female directors are to be afforded the opportunity to shadow on up to three episodes of an NBC series. Their experience culminates with an in-season commitment for each participant to direct at least one episode of the series she shadows.
Female Forward is slated to begin with the 2018-19 season on 10 NBC series with the intent of expanding the number of directors and shows in subsequent years.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More