Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia‘s Seven Bucks Productions has brought in former senior Sony TV comedy executive Scott Landsman as Head of Television. Meanwhile, Verve’s Melissa Fried has come on board as VP of Film Development & Production.
Prior to joining Seven Bucks, Landsman served as SVP of Comedy Development for Sony Pictures Television, overseeing such series as The Afterparty for Apple TV+, Twisted Metal for Peacock, Woke for Hulu, the animated Good Times for Netflix, ABC’s syndicated hit The Goldbergs, and Live in Front of a Studio Audience, the Emmy-winning live specials executive produced by Norman Lear and Jimmy Kimmel.
He left Sony in the December executive shakeup and joined Seven Bucks a few months later, succeeding Kevin Hill who had left and is now Head of TV for Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort. Earlier in his career, Landsman was VP of Original Programming and Development at Comedy Central.
So far, Seven Bucks’ scripted TV efforts have been in the comedy genre with HBO’s Ballers, which has found a new life on Netflix, and NBC’s Young Rock.
Fried joins Seven Bucks from Verve, where her appointment to the Motion Picture Literary team made her the company’s first internally promoted female Agent. At Verve, she guided the careers of two-time Emmy nominee Jac Schaeffer (Wandavision), Oscar nominees Meg LeFauve (Inside Out) and Allison Schroeder (Hidden Figures), and Stephany Folsom (Toy Story 4). Also among Fried’s clients were Jon & Erich Hoeber (The Meg), Adele Lim (Crazy Rich Asians), Hanelle Culpepper (Anansi Boys, Star Trek: Picard), and Andrew Rhymer & Jeff Chan (Plus One). Fried started her career as an entertainment attorney.
“Scott has consistently shown his ability to create some of television’s most appealing shows, and his expertise will be invaluable as Seven Bucks continues to scale its television endeavors,” said Seven Bucks’ President of Production, Hiram Garcia, who made the announcement “On the film side, Melissa’s brilliant instincts on content and her unique ability to partner with and cultivate visionary creators will further strengthen our blockbuster slate.”
Seven Bucks has more than 60 film and television projects and counting in active development. Among the company’s upcoming titles are Red One, greenlit by Amazon, directed by Emmy nominee Jake Kasdan and starring Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, J.K. Simmons, and Lucy Liu; Kate Warne, also for Amazon, an action-packed biopic starring Emily Blunt as the first female Pinkerton agent; Moana, a live-action remake of the animated feature, directed by Thomas Kail from a script by Jared Bush and Dana Ledoux Miller; new installments in the Fast and Furious and Jumanji franchises; and, in partnership with Vice Studios, a docuseries investigating the mysterious demise of World Championship Wrestling (WCW), once the biggest wrestling company in America.