NBC has named veteran film executive Kahli Small to the position of Senior Vice President, Drama Development, it was announced today by Jennifer Salke, President, NBC Entertainment. Small will report to Pearlena Igbokwe, Executive Vice President, Drama Development."We are thrilled to have Kahli bring her incredible talent for developing compelling drama to NBC," said Salke. "Today, the distinction between the big and small screen is more and more irrelevant; instead there are just good stories - and Kahli has a knack for finding and nurturing them."
"I'm looking forward to the contribution Kahli will make to our team," added Igbokwe. "She has demonstrated - both at GK Films and Focus Features - the ability to develop smart, prestigious projects that have enjoyed critical and commercial success - which is the future of drama development at NBC."
Most recently Small was Executive Vice President of Production and Development for Academy Award-winning producer Graham King's (The Departed, Argo, Hugo) production company, GK Films. While there, she successfully oversaw the development of a number of projects including a biopic of Freddy Mercury by Steven Rivele and Chris Wilkinson, to star Sasha Baron Cohen with Sony. At GK, Small bought, sold and developed material with Academy Award-winning talent; she developed from scratch a drama about the Battle of Britain with the legendary Robert Towne, and successfully set up a number of projects with third parties to co-finance, including Craig Rosenberg's sci-fi thriller Panoptician.
Prior to joining GK, Small spent eight years as a production executive for Focus Features, serving her last four years as Executive Vice President of Production. At Focus, she oversaw more than twenty films, ranging in scope and budget from the Academy Award-nominated Milk, starring Sean Penn and directed by Gus Van Sant, to David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, starring Viggo Mortensen, and Naomi Watts, to the Spanish language film "Sin Nombre," the inaugural film of Focus Features International. In 2010, Focus had their widest release to date with the film she discovered as a book, developed and supervised, the George Clooney thriller The American, directed by award-winning director Anton Corbijn. She was also part of the team that acquired the critical and commercially successful film The Kids Are All Right, directed by Lisa Cholodenko, as well as supervised the creative post and delivery of the film.
Small's first job in Hollywood was as story editor for Doug Wick's company, Red Wagonn Productions, at Sony Pictures. There she helped develop such films as Gladiator, Girl Interrupted, Stuart Little, and Bewitched. A native New Yorker, Small is a member of Women In Film, the IFP, WriteGirl, a non-profit organization helping to teach young girls the power of story, and Life Labs, a non-profit organization to teach women with life threatening illnesses how to use writing as a means to cope with their diseases.
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