Nutopia’s McKeown moves Eastern

US-based prodco Eastern has bolstered its development division with the addition of a former Love Productions and Nutopia executive.

Simon McKeown becomes senior VP of development and will work across the company’s original output. He was most recently head of development at Jane Root’s Nutopia in the UK, where he sold series including Bear Grylls’ Great British Adventures for ITV.

Before that McKeown had been head of development for Love, where he developed Benefits Street, Why Don’t You Speak English and How Sherlock Changed the World. He’s also had stints as a development producer for the BBC and was Zig Zag’s first development chief.

Eastern has also promoted Jillian Brand and Gregg Lieberman to become VPs of development, while Lisa LeeKing has been promoted to VP of casting.

Brand joined Eastern in 2014 and has helped land development deals with A&E, History, H2 and Lifetime while Lieberman arrived in 2010 and has worked on shows including The Epic History of Everyday Things and The Worst Thing I Ever Did.

LeeKing, who joined Eastern a year after its creation in 2005, has worked across the prodco’s slate, including on Can’t Get a Date.

Toby Barraud and Stefan Springman, co-founders and executive producers at Eastern, said: “We have a robust development pipeline and are confident this team will help us in bringing 20 projects in active development to fruition.”