Billy Bowring.
Billy Bowring has joined See-Saw Films as development producer at its Australian division after four years at Fremantle.
Reporting to executive producer Rachel Gardner and head of television Jamie Laurenson, he is primarily advancing TV projects but also working across the film slate.
Gardner says: “We wanted to work with someone who shares our taste, drive and ambition. Billy joins us with fantastic credentials and talent relationships and we are delighted to have him on board.”
As a development manager and development exec at Fremantle he was involved in such shows as Wentworth and Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Before that he was production assistant to Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen at the UK’s Number 9 Films, working across such films as Gerard Johnson’s London gangster thriller Hyena and Todd Haynes’ Carol starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.
This marks another expansion for the production company headed by Emile Sherman and Iain Canning following the launch of I Am That, a co-venture with Lion director Garth Davis and Samantha Lang as head of development.
See-Saw’s The End, a 10-part dementia drama created by Samantha Strauss, starring Frances O’Connor and Harriet Walter, has just premiered in the UK on Sky Atlantic and streaming service NOW TV, which co-commissioned the show with Foxtel.
Among the first reviews in the UK, Metro’s Abigail Gillibrand declared: “Samantha has managed to gracefully tackle hard-hitting situations, from coping with both mental and physical scars after beating cancer; terminal illnesses seeing patients demand control over their own death; how depression and anxiety warp the human mind; and how even the carer needs to be cared for at some point in their life.
“But what first appears as a thought-provoking and controversial series, actually secures family, love and friendship at the heart of the show, and how humanity will fight for survival when thrown into some of the most difficult of circumstances.
Currently filming is Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, a revenge Western starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst, for which Netflix acquired worldwide rights.
In the UK Apple TV + has commissioned See-Saw to make Slow Horses, a series starring Gary Oldman as the leader of a team of British intelligence agents who serve in a dumping ground department of MI5 – Slough House.
Writer-director Andrew Haigh’s The North Water, a miniseries about a disgraced ex-army surgeon who signs up as ship’s doctor on a whaling expedition to the Arctic, starring Jack O’Connell and Colin Farrell, is in post for BBC Two.