Endeavor’s Asylum Entertainment expands executive team with two hires
Endeavor-owned Asylum Entertainment Group has expanded its exec team by appointing Ben Bitonti as chief creative officer and Eric Hoberman as exec VP of programming and development.
Ben Bitonti
Bitonti will spearhead creative development and production at the LA-based firm while Hoberman has been charged with enhancing the development pipeline and supporting the broad creative offerings of the company. Both will report directly to president Jodi Flynn.
With more than 15 years of experience packaging, selling and producing both unscripted and scripted content, Bitonti returns to Asylum having previously been the company’s VP of development when he worked across titles including: Cyrus vs Cyrus: Design and Conquer (Bravo); Origins: The Journey of Humankind (National Geographic); In Ice Cold Blood (Oxygen); and To Rome for Love (Bravo).
More recently, Bitonti served as chief creative officer and head of unscripted content for Basil Iwanyk’s sports content studio Game1.
Eric Hoberman
He was previously head of non-fiction content and alternative programming at 101 Studios, where he executive produced Taylor Sheridan’s special 1883: The Road West (Paramount+) and worked across HBO’s untitled George Clooney-produced documentary about the Ohio State sexual abuse scandal.
Prior to that, he was STX Entertainment’s senior VP of development and focused on reality series FBoy Island (HBO Max) and projects for Netflix, A&E, Peacock and Quibi.
Hoberman, meanwhile, has spent 20 years in development. He recently served as head of development at Religion of Sports, founded by football stars Tom Brady and Michael Strahan and sports documentarian Gotham Chopra.
Previously, he was senior VP of development at ITV America, where he sold the format Project Icon with Jason Derulo to BBC Three. There, he also developed Netflix’s Brent Hodge-directed documentary The Longest Third Date, National Geographic’s Called to the Wild, TLC’s Taken at Birth and projects for Amazon Prime, A&E, Roku and Apple TV Plus.
Hoberman held several key positions prior to joining ITV America, including VP of development at eOne and director of development at Smart Dog Media, with Minute to Win It (NBC) among his notable credits.
Elsewhere, Warner Bros Discovery-owned US cablenet HGTV has greenlit the Asylum-produced real estate series Zillow Gone Wild, inspired by the Instagram account of the same name.
The 8×30’ series with a one-hour season finale will showcase weird and quirky homes and share the backstories of their buyers, sellers and histories. The series is slated to premiere in early 2024.
