Blumhouse Television has added five new positions, to expand its production, development and business affairs teams, Variety has learned exclusively.
The new hires are: Lisa Niedenthal as executive vice president of production; Tevin Adelman as vice president of production; Alexandra Reed as manager of production ;Anne Pedersen as senior vice president of business affairs; and Kyle Chalmers as vice president of development and original programming. In addition, Sahar Vahedi has been promoted to director of development.
“2018 has been an incredible year for us, with series launches on HBO, Facebook Watch, USA Network, Hulu and Netflix and award-winning documentaries at the Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals, plus docuseries in production at FX, Sundance and Oxygen, so staffing up has been a priority,” said Marci Wiseman, co-president Blumhouse Television.
“We have been very fortunate to bring on such outstanding executives to fill critically important roles in production, development and business affairs,” added Jeremy Gold, co-president of Blumhouse Television.
Niedenthal will oversee productions across all scripted and non-scripted programming. Prior to Blumhouse Television, she served as senior vice president of production for film, television, and digital at Entertainment One, overseeing production on projects including HBO’s “Sharp Objects,” which Blumhouse Television co-produced. Other projects included “Ice” and “A Million Little Pieces.” Niedenthal began her career in film and has combined her freelance producing with more than 12 years as an executive and consultant at Disney, Viacom, Showtime and Entertainment One. Niedenthal is also producing partner of Emilio Estevez on his directing and writing projects.
Before joining Blumhouse Television, Pedersen worked as a consultant for FremantleMedia North America, dealing with the negotiation and deals for scripted series. She was a consultant for NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, where she handled deals for unscripted pilots and series with other stints as vice president of business affairs of ABC Entertainment and vice president of business affairs of international creative management.
Adelman was previously the vice president of production at Dakota Pictures, overseeing series such as “Deadbeat” for Hulu and Lionsgate, “Nightcap” for Pop TV, and “Lopez” for TV Land along with many other series and specials for Netflix, Comedy Central, and HBO. Prior to that, Adelman had been producing television and feature films including the original series “Con Man” for Lionsgate, the first-ever scripted series for BET, “DVD on TV” for FX, and the scripted reality-TV send-up “Reality Show” for Showtime and Sony Screen Gems.
Chalmers served as director of original scripted content at NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment before joining Blumhouse Television. He worked on “Mr. Robot,” “Suits,” “Happy!,” “Shooter,” and several other shows. Before transitioning to the drama side he worked on USA’s comedy series as well. Before that, he was at Spike TV. He started his career in the television department at ICM Partners.