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NEW YORK: Cheryl Bloch, a Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning producer, has become WE tv's first senior VP of scripted programming, effective immediately. In her new role, Bloch will work out of Santa Monica under Marc Juris, the president and general manager of WE tv. She will be expected to scout, …

NEW YORK: NBC has ordered a new single-camera comedy from Tina Fey and Robert Carlock (30 Rock) that will star Ellie Kemper (The Office). Kemper will play a woman who escapes from a cult and starts life over in New York City. The 13-episode series, tentatively titled Tooken, is being …

LONDON: Shine International has sold the prime-time sitcom Vicious, starring Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi, to the U.S. public broadcaster PBS. PBS picked up the 6×30-minute series for broadcast in 2014. It features McKellen and Jacobi playing a couple who have lived together in a small London flat for newly …

SANTA MONICA: The participation of the Spanish audiovisual industry at the AFM is represented under the banner Cinema from Spain. It is organized by the Federation of Spanish Audiovisual Producers’ Associations (FAPAE) with the support of the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade (ICEX). Fabia Buenaventura Canino, the general manager of …

SANTA MONICA: Lightning Entertainment has been focused on the worldwide distribution and licensing of indie films, mainly for the theatrical market, and now the company is looking to enter into the TV-movie arena and will be at the AFM this year. Lightning Entertainment is heading to the event with Storm …

NEW YORK: Ahead of the AFM, Gene George, the executive VP of Starz Worldwide Distribution, talks to World Screen about distributing the premium channel's series worldwide and the state of the TV movie market. When Chris Albrecht became CEO of Starz in 2010, he quickly decided that what the pay-TV …

NEW YORK: Fernando Szew, the founding partner and CEO of MarVista Entertainment, discusses the challenges and opportunities in the marketplace and how that has changed over the last ten years. When MarVista Entertainment was set up ten years ago, it was mainly a distribution company that represented programming produced by …

SANTA MONICA: Leading the slate for Multicom Entertainment Group this AFM is The Secret Life of John Paul II, a feature film starring Aleksey Guskov and Giorgio Pasotti. It is based on the book penned by Lino Zani, a former ski instructor and friend of the late pope. “The Secret …

EL SEGUNDO: DIRECTV had 139,000 net U.S. additions for its third quarter, bringing its total subscribers to more than 37 million, with about 17 million subs in Latin America. These gains came in the same quarter that Time Warner Cable reported a loss of 306,000 video subscribers. Q3 revenues grew …

NEW YORK: Scott Jones, the president of Artist View Entertainment, tells World Screen that the key to success in independent movies is to know what the market needs. Jones started his career owning video retail outlets, and then served as executive producer on more than a dozen feature films. He …