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Simon Pegg, Nick Frost incubate YA talent

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Hot Fuzz

Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have set up an IP rights incubator alongside Sony Pictures Television (SPT) focusing on original scripted drama created by and aimed at young adults.

The incubator comes via Pegg and Frost’s UK-based production company Stolen Picture, in which SPT took a minority stake last year shortly after the acting and writing duo founded it alongside Miles Ketley.

Stolen Picture has brought together five creatives with wide-ranging backgrounds and is working with them on two projects created by the prodco, thriller procedural We Never Sleep and sci-fi adventure Chemistry.

The company said the model for the rights incubator had been imported from the US. The team of five creatives have been placed on retainers over an undisclosed period and will have co-ownership of the projects they are working on, it added.

The projects are aimed across media including television, graphic novels, gaming and virtual reality.

Ketley, Stolen Picture’s CEO, said: “Time and again, we’ve found that our projects – be they comedy, horror, sci-fi or straight drama – are speaking to YA audiences and so we wanted to ensure that authentic YA voices were at the heart of these projects.

“The IP rights incubator seemed to be a smart and commercially fair way of engaging this incredibly talented team to find a common voice in this space and create something truly unique for audiences across multiple platforms.”

The five members of the incubator are writer and producer Olly Cambridge, who created BBC3’s Pls Like; Gemma Copping, who won the Soho Young Writers’ Award in 2013 for her play In Your Image and is currently a storyliner on Eastenders; Phoebe Éclair-Powell, who most recently wrote for Sky Atlantic crime drama Tin Star; comedian Elliot Steel; and Faryal Velmi, who wrote the pilot Destiny Jones for Wall to Wall.

Pegg, Frost and Stolen Picture creative directors James Serafinowicz and Nat Saunders are working with the team as showrunners. Jane Langford, former Sony International development director, and Stolen Picture development producer Emma Bell are managing the incubator project.

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