Gunpowder & Sky Announces Executive Hires, Two Production Deals and Development Deal

5/6/20

- Prophets Films and Geoffrey James Clark Sign Production Deals
- Anne Loder Named VP Of Unscripted Development And Jason Goldberg Tapped For Director Of Scripted Development
- Donny Tourette Signs Development Deal For Unscripted And Music Programming

Gunpowder & Sky, the fast-growing independent entertainment company for the streaming generation, announced today that it has expanded further into the unscripted arena by naming Anne Loder the VP of Unscripted Development. Jason Goldberg also joins the team as Director of Scripted Development. Both will report to David Gale, Executive Vice President of Development and Production. In addition, Prophets Films, founded by Vikram Gandhi, and Geoffrey James Clark, formerly president of Futurism Studios, have signed production deals. Also, Donny Tourette, former BBC and Sky VIsion executive has signed a development deal for Unscripted and Music programming.

“So far, our business has been able to push forward during uncertain times, and as our slate has grown exponentially since we launched a few years ago, now is the perfect time to add some more restless creatives to the team who will keep pushing us to innovate and elevate our game,” said Van Toffler, Gunpowder & Sky CEO. “We are also stoked to have production deals with these proven hitmakers and can’t wait to see what fan favorite they’ll create next.”

Prior to joining Gunpowder & Sky, Loder was the Senior Director of Development at Funny or Die where she oversaw the growth of the unscripted slate. She also served as Director of Development for Fusion where she developed and supervised the shift in mandate to become a lifestyle & entertainment brand with shows like “Shade: Queens of NYC”, “Car vs. America” with Jalopnik and the comedy documentary “Fatherless” with Baron Vaughn. She began her executive career at IFC where she worked on “Portlandia”, “Comedy Bang! Bang!, and “Maron.”

Goldberg joins Gunpowder & Sky from MTV Studios where he served as Senior Manager of Scripted Development. He was previously the Development & Production Coordinator of Scripted Series for VH1. A graduate of Cornell University, Goldberg started his career at HBO and Lee Daniels Entertainment.

Prophets Films is a New York-based production company that focuses on premium documentary and unscripted content founded by filmmaker Gandhi. Gandhi is the director behind the award-winning film, Kumare´, Netflix Originals Barry and “Trigger Warning”, and is a regular correspondent on “VICE”. Prophets produced the Netflix Original, Grass is Greener, and currently has a slate of documentary films and television series in production.

Clark previously served as the President of Futurism Studios, a division of Futurism Media (sold in 2019). Clark has a history of producing both scripted and documentary content, with recent projects including the sci-fi film The 2nd starring Ryan Phillippe, Tribeca 2019 official selection, I Am Human, the Rosario Dawson narrated documentary Trust Machine: the Story of Blockchain, as well as the short film that he wrote and directed, SophiaWorld starring Evan Rachel Wood. Clark has also created, developed and produced series including “Glimpse” for Facebook Watch in partnership with Dust, “Trip Testers” for Travel Channel, “Million Dollar Closets” for HGTV and “Provocateur” for YouTube Premium.

Tourette, who is based in the U.K., started his career at BBC where he worked on “The Weakest Link” before moving on to Sky where he set up the first in-house development unit for Sky Vision. He has also had pilots commissioned by Sky One, VH1 America, stars in and is executive producing a feature documentary based on his band, Towers of London set to release on BBC next year, and currently has pilot in production with MTV UK. He also co-manages up-and-coming UK artist Jazmin Bean.

ABOUT GUNPOWDER & SKY

Gunpowder & Sky is a fast-growing independent entertainment company that creates and distributes feature films, series, short form content, podcasts and channels for the streaming generation across sci-fi, horror, music and comedy.

Since its inception in 2016, Gunpowder & Sky has released more than 30 feature films and series, two seasons of its original narrative podcast, and more than 750 short films in theatres, on TVOD and in partnership with leading platforms such as HBO, Netflix, MTV, Hulu, Sky, Showtime, DirecTV, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, Quibi, and soon HBO Max, Audible and Discovery.

Notable films and series include Her Smell, Lil Peep, Prospect, Sea Fever, The Little Hours, Cam, Hearts Beat Loud, Lords of Chaos, Tragedy Girls, Summer of 84, Villains, “Survive”, “50 States of Fright” and “Drawn and Recorded”.

With a collective audience of more than 65M monthly unique visitors, Gunpowder & Sky’s current owned and operated brands include DUST, the number one free sci-fi channel; ALTER, a leading horror brand, and CUT, an unscripted comedy brand that is home to the successful formats “Truth or Drink” and “Grandmas Smoking Weed”. DUST, ALTER and CUT are presently distributed on platforms such as Apple, Amazon, Comcast, Sling, Roku, Samsung, Vizio TV, Xfinity Flex, YouTube, Facebook, AT&T, DirecTV, Sinclair, Samsung TV Plus and Instagram.

With offices in Los Angeles and New York, Gunpowder & Sky was founded by Van Toffler and Floris Bauer, in partnership with The Chernin Group and AT&T. 

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