Playground hires UK creative director

Channel 4’s (C4) commissioning editor for drama is leaving the UK broadcaster to join former HBO Films boss Colin Callender’s Playground Entertainment in London.

Sophie Gardiner will join the US-based firm when its launches its UK office early next year, following the recent appointment of All3Media International MD Louise Pedersen to head the operation.

At C4, Gardiner developed series including My Fad Fat Diary, The Mill, Southcliffe and Utopia.

Callender said Gardiner would help broaden the prodco’s slate and expand its reach into the UK writing community.

The firm is currently in post-production with All3’s Company Pictures on a six-part miniseries adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, starring Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis, Claire Foy and Jonathan Pryce and set to debut on the BBC and PBS Masterpiece in early 2015.

It has also partnered with Company Pictures co-founder Charlie Pattinson’s New Pictures on The Missing, an eight-part thriller for the BBC and Starz.

Playground was founded in 2012 by Callender, who won his first Emmy for the television adaptation of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. As president of HBO Films, he was responsible for an award-winning slate of movies and miniseries.