{"id":358624,"date":"2026-04-01T13:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T13:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/358624\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T13:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T13:32:09","slug":"bbc-hires-jonny-richards-from-disney-who-was-an-exec-on-rivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/358624\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC Hires Jonny Richards From Disney Who Was An Exec On ‘Rivals’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: The BBC<\/a> has raided Disney<\/a> for the exec producer behind A Thousand Blows<\/a> and Rivals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tJonny Richards<\/a>, who is Disney+<\/a>\u2019s Director, Scripted Originals in EMEA, will join the BBC drama commissioning team this summer. <\/p>\n

\n\tHe has been with Disney for almost five years, working in a growing commissioning team and building out a slate featuring Steven Knight\u2019s boxing drama A Thousand Blows, Jilly Cooper adaptation Rivals, Jeff Pope\u2019s Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes\u00a0and\u00a0Sean Bean-starrer Shardlake. He was recently promoted<\/a> as EMEA content chief Angela Jain gets set to splash the cash<\/a> on European originals. He previously ran development for Normal People maker Element Pictures and used to work for Channel 4.<\/p>\n

\n\tRichards joins Lindsay Salt<\/a>\u2019s BBC drama commissioning team, which has recent credits including The Night Manager, Lord of the Flies and Richard Gadd\u2019s upcoming series Half Man. Salt recently talked strategy in a Deadline profile, revealing how she is trying<\/a> to subvert audience expectations. Landing a top Disney exec isn\u2019t a bad next step and is a rare example of a commissioner jumping from a streamer to a broadcaster. Salt herself moved from Netflix to the BBC.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJonny Richards. Image: Still Moving<\/p>\n

\n\tRichards will join in a few months. His appointment comes a few weeks after<\/a> the tragic death of Peaky Blinders commissioning editor Danielle Scott-Haughton. Tanya Qureshi, meanwhile, recently lef<\/a>t<\/a> Salt\u2019s team<\/a> to run Margot Robbie\u2019s LuckyChap out of the UK. Richards is not a like-for-like replacement for either. <\/p>\n

\n\tSalt said: \u201cWe feel incredibly\u00a0lucky to have Jonny joining the BBC. Highly respected across the industry and with a wealth of experience and credits under his belt, Jonny knows what makes world class drama and will be a fantastic addition to our team.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRichards added: \u201cIt\u2019s a real privilege to be joining Lindsay and the brilliant team at the BBC \u2013 an organisation whose breadth and quality of drama has had a lasting influence on me.\u00a0I have loved my time at Disney and feel incredibly lucky to have worked with such wonderful colleagues, led by Angela and Lee. I\u2019m excited to collaborate with our industry\u2019s outstanding community of writers and producers at the BBC, to find stories and voices which resonate with, and entertain, audiences across the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: The BBC has raided Disney for the exec producer behind A Thousand Blows and Rivals. Jonny Richards,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[126918,2974,2398,156,189328,82331,111,139,69,9424,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-358624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-a-thousand-blows","9":"tag-bbc","10":"tag-disney","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-jonny-richards","13":"tag-lindsay-salt","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-rivals","18":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}