Paramount Pictures is getting ready to rev up Paramount Players, the division of the movie studio that was formed around Brian Robbins in 2017 to generate niche, genre and cutting edge films. It hasn’t had a president, or much output, since the former CEO of AwesomenessTV left to run Nickelodeon in 2018.
Emma Watts is looking to revive the label and is down to a few candidates to run it. Deadline hears that Jeremy Kramer, an exec who worked with Watts at Fox and who is now at Disney, is atop the leader board. No comment from Paramount, which is also looking to fill the production president post and word is another exec who worked with Watts at Fox, Mike Ireland, is rumored as a contender for that job.
Launched in 2017, Paramount Players has a mandate to develop and produce features in conjunction with ViacomCBS-owned brands such as Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central and BET. Films from the Paramount Players label so far include Dora and the Lost City of Gold, based on Nickelodeon's beloved animated preschool series Dora the Explorer, Playing With Fire starring John Cena, What Men Want, Body Cam. A live-action/CGI-hybrid Rugrats movie was also in the works, but has since been shelved. The label was also slated to revive and produce a theatrical version of Nickelodeon's fan-favorite horror anthology series Are You Afraid of the Dark?, however, Nickelodeon later decided that the revival would work better as a TV miniseries, which was renewed for a second season earlier this year.
Motion picture group president Emma Watts Paramount in June after a long run at Fox. Watts had soured on the direction that Fox was taking after it was purchased by The Walt Disney Company and was convinced to make the leap by Paramount chairman Jim Gianopulos, the former Fox studios chief. Other Fox veterans to follow Gianopulos to Paramount include distribution head Chris Aronson and global communications head Chris Petrikin.
Watts is also looking to hire a new president at Paramount and has been talking to candidates, Variety is reporting. Mike Ireland, a senior VP of production at Fox and another former colleague of Watts, is a contender for the job. It’s a little unclear how that job would ultimately manifest and the position could be a co-president role.
Before joining Fox in 2010, Kramer was a partner with Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld at Red Hour Films. He also worked with Noah Baumbach and was an executive at Miramax.
Chess pieces are still being moved around at Paramount after Elizabeth Raposo to exit Paramount's president of production post last month.
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