Bear Grylls Producers Launch New Production Venture

Mark Westcott and Duncan Gaudin have formed Marshal Bishop Productions, a new formatted factual and factual-entertainment production company based in the U.K.

Marshal Bishop’s creative focus is on returnable factual series. The duo behind the venture has decades of experience in high-end specialist factual, factual and factual-entertainment program-making.

Westcott is an award-winning director and producer. He is principally known for his work with Bear Grylls, which includes Bear Grylls: Mission Survive (ITV), Survivor Games (Shanghai Media), Escape to the Legion (Channel 4) and Man Versus Wild (Discovery Channel, known in the U.K. as Born Survivor).

Gaudin is one of the U.K.’s leading location producers. His credits include several series with Grylls, including The Island (Channel 4), Bear Grylls: Mission Survive, six seasons of Man Versus Wild, Bear’s Wild Weekends (Channel 4) and Running Wild with Bear Grylls (NBC).

Westcott, CEO of Marshal Bishop, said: “The demand for formatted and factual entertainment content is booming across all platforms. Marshal Bishop has fresh ideas, big creative concepts and a wealth of strong partnerships across the world on which we can draw. Our aim is to create and co-produce ideas and content with independent production companies around the world, whether those are for U.K. or international broadcasters. In the current COVID climate, this makes us much more flexible in terms of how ideas are funded and delivered. Bringing high quality to the screen is our absolute priority, but we are proactively wanting to work with partners in order to do that.”

Gaudin, chief creative officer, added: “Our track record of working with some of the world’s biggest talent in formatted and factual entertainment allows us to pair exceptional faces with great ideas. We already have a development slate that includes precinct-based reality, survival, endurance and adventure formats and location-based challenge game shows for which we are seeking partners. With a project already well underway in America, we have really hit the ground running.”