Twenty Twenty names creative director

Warner Bros-owned UK production company Twenty Twenty has appointed former Blast! Films exec James O’Reilly as its new creative director.

James O’Reilly

Reporting to Leanne Klein, MD of Twenty Twenty and sister company Wall to Wall, O’Reilly’s brief will be to oversee the creation and production of new programmes across Twenty Twenty’s slate and to nurture the company’s returning series.

O’Reilly will move from London to Bristol for his new role, in line with Twenty Twenty’s commitment to relocating the business to the UK regions and helping to grow creative talent outside London.

Twenty Twenty will establish its new headquarters in Bristol from 2021, while retaining a production base in London.

Last year, the prodco announced that its casting, story editing and post-production teams for Channel 4 format First Dates would be based in Bristol, following the restaurant-set dating show’s move out of London to a new establishment in Manchester.

The company also launched a new training scheme, in partnership with Channel 4, to train 24 Bristol-based production staff, who are now working on First Dates in areas including casting, research, editing and directing.

New BBC2 jewellery-making competition series All that Glitters is also being made by a regionally based team from the company’s Bristol office.

In more than 10 years at Blast! Films, spending the last four as creative director, O’Reilly has overseen the company’s development slate, working across Channel 4 shows The Secret Life of the Zoo and Jade: The Reality Star Who Changed Britain and BBC titles Forensics: The Real CSI, The Big Hospital Experiment and Reported Missing, among others.

He has also led the company’s growth in the US market, landing series on networks including A&E, Investigation Discovery, Nat Geo Wild and HGTV, as well as the company’s first, as-yet-unannounced SVoD commission. O’Reilly will take up his new role at Twenty Twenty next spring.

Twenty Twenty’s previous creative director was Emma Willias, who stepped up to MD in 2017  before being replaced in that role by Klein in 2019.