Update - Below is Nickelodeon's official press release announcing the news:
NICKELODEON HIRES ANGELIQUE YEN AND EDDIE GAMARRA
TO HELM STUDIO BUSINESS
BURBANK, Calif.—Aug. 20, 2019—Angelique Yen and Eddie Gamarra are joining Nickelodeon to oversee its burgeoning studio model business, producing content for long-form movie content and SVOD services. Yen and Gamarra will report to Nickelodeon’s Executive Vice President of Animation, Ramsey Naito, and will be based in Burbank.
Yen joins Nickelodeon as Senior Vice President, Physical Production, Nickelodeon Movies overseeing production for all original long-form movie content including TV movies and SVOD. Eddie Gamarra has been named Vice President, Studio Business Development, Nickelodeon, in charge of developing animated and live-action content for SVOD platforms and third party players.
Angelique Yen
Said Naito, “Nickelodeon’s studio business gives us the opportunity to create different stories and let our IP live on beyond the network, while growing our audience and our creative-led culture. The addition of Angelique and Eddie to the team will help bolster this division by finding new ways to reimagine our shows and characters, in new formats and with new partners, while feeding the demand for our content with kids and families everywhere.”
Yen began her career at Disney in 1991 in production where she worked on
Aladdin, Pocahontas, Fantasia 2000, as well as
Brother Bear and
Wild Life in development. Yen joined DreamWorks Animation in 2009, where she worked in both production and held studio roles managing films in the U.S. and internationally from
Megamind to
Madagascar 3, How to Train Your Dragon and
Shrek 4, including unreleased titles:
Me and My Shadow, Bureau of Otherworldly Operations, Everest, and a 2D short
Bird Karma by William Salazar.
Eddie Gamarra
In 2018, Yen joined Netflix overseeing their animation production and pipeline for 16 slated productions including:
Klaus,
Over the Moon, and
Wendell and Wild. Recently, Yen has been a consulting producer working on several feature initiatives, budgeting and scheduling feature front end start-ups.
A former college professor, Gamarra was most recently a literary manager at The Gotham Group, a multifaceted management and production company representing screenwriters, directors, animators, authors, illustrators, publishers and animation studios globally. With a primary focus on kids’ and family entertainment, Gamarra worked with numerous
New York Times best-selling authors and illustrators, as well as Oscar®, Emmy, Caldecott, and Newbery-award winners and nominees. Gamarra also served as an Executive Producer of
The Maze Runner trilogy from 20th Century Fox, based on the
New York Times best-selling book series; Disney+’s production of Jerry Spinelli’s iconic love story
Stargirl; and Henry Selick’s stop-motion feature collaboration with Jordan Peele,
Wendell and Wild, for Netflix.
Gamarra received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Vassar College, a Masters from New York University and a Masters/PhD from Emory University.
Nickelodeon, now in its 40
th year, is the number-one entertainment brand for kids. It has built a diverse, global business by putting kids first in everything it does. The company includes television programming and production in the United States and around the world, plus consumer products, digital, recreation, books and feature films. Nickelodeon’s U.S. television network is seen in more than 90 million households and has been the number-one-rated kids’ basic cable network for 22 consecutive years. For more information or artwork, visit
http://www.nickpress.com. Nickelodeon and all related titles, characters and logos are trademarks of Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIA, VIAB).
###
Nickelodeon Taps Angelique Yen, Eddie Gamarra to Head Studio Business
The two executives will oversee longform content for third-party platforms in addition to in-house projects.
Nickelodeon has named Angelique Yen and Eddie Gamarra to key posts as the Viacom-owned cable network develops its studio model business, which produces long-form movie content and programming for subscription video on demand (SVOD) services.
Yen, a veteran of Netflix, DreamWorks Animation and Disney, will be Senior Vice President (SVP) of Physical Production at Nickelodeon Movies. Gamarra will be Vice President (VP) of Studio Business Development. Based in Burbank, both will report to Ramsey Naito, Executive Vice President (EVP) of Animation at Nickelodeon.
"Nickelodeon’s studio business gives us the opportunity to create different stories and let our IP live on beyond the network, while growing our audience and our creative-led culture," said Naito. "The addition of Angelique and Eddie to the team will help bolster this division by finding new ways to reimagine our shows and characters, in new formats and with new partners, while feeding the demand for our content with kids and families everywhere."
Yen will oversee production for all original longform content at Nickelodeon, including TV movies and SVOD. Upon joining Netflix in 2018, she oversaw the streamer's animation production pipeline on 16 projects, including
Klaus,
Over the Moon and
Wendell and Wild. Most recently, Yen was a consulting producer working on feature initiatives, budgeting and scheduling for start ups.
Yen began her career at Disney in 1991 in production, and joined DreamWorks Animation in 2009. At Disney, she worked on such films as
Aladdin,
Pocahontas and
Fantasia 2000; her tenure at DreamWorks Animation included work on
Madagascar 3 and
Megamind.
Former college professor Gamarra will be in charge of developing animated and live-action content for streaming platforms and third-party players. He was most recently a literary manager at The Gotham Group, a management and production company representing screenwriters, directors, animators, authors, illustrators, publishers and animation studios globally, with a focus on kids and family entertainment.
He was also an executive producer of
The Maze Runner trilogy from 20th Century Fox, Disney+'s
Stargirl and Netflix's
Wendell and Wild, from Henry Selick and Jordan Peele.
Yen and Gamarra are the latest additions to the executive team under network head Brian Robbins, joining
Naito, Programming Head
Paul DeBenedittis, Head of Live-Action Scripted Content
Shauna Phelan, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
Jenny Wall and Head of Nickelodeon Preschool
Eryk Casemiro.
Nickelodeon's studio model aims to license and produce shows based on the network's hit intellectual properties [IP] for third-party platforms. The studio currently has a live-action
Avatar: The Last Airbender remake in production with Netflix, in addition to
animated The Loud House and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies from the streamer. Nickelodeon also inked an exclusive, multi-year partnership with Netflix on animated comedy series
Pinky Malinky, and licensed two made-for-TV movies to the SVOD -
Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling and
Invader Zim: Enter The Florpus.
More Nick: Nickelodeon Embarks on New Direction with its Biggest, Most Wide-Ranging Content Slate Ever!
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Broadcasting & Cable; Press release via Nickandmore!.
Originally published: Tuesday, August 20, 2019 at 18:58 BST.
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