WORKING LIVES
Britannia
Nathalie Peter-Contesse
started her career in development with a bang in LA, working on the successful action movie 300. Now based in London, at Vertigo Films, she continues to develop high-octane drama for TV and film. What does your job involve? Development starts with finding an idea and generally finishes when the drama goes into production – that’s a bittersweet moment, because that’s when I have to say goodbye to a show. I oversee a slate of projects in development at Vertigo, supporting the process of taking them towards their goal of being commissioned. This means finding ideas or IP, such as books, working with writers and talent, and talking to commissioners. You need to have projects in the pipeline to make sure you have things ready to go when a show gets commissioned or falls through. How many ideas make it to the screen? You have a lot of runners at the beginning of the race, but few reach the finishing line. It’s part of the job that
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you have to let go of projects along the way, but Vertigo has a very good development-to-production ratio. Can you bring good ideas back? Sometimes. A show needs so many stars to align. Timing is crucial for commissioners – there’s not much you can do if every broadcaster has something in that same space, even if the show is great. You then have to wait or move on. How did you get into drama development? I always liked stories, books and films, but I initially qualified as a lawyer in Switzerland; my mother is Italian, my father is Swiss. I moved to Los Angeles and I was lucky enough to get a job as an assistant at Gianni Nunnari’s Hollywood Gang Productions, which had made the vampire movie From Dusk Till Dawn and Se7en, among many other things. I grew in that company and became head of development. What was the first film you developed? The first movie I worked on in my development role was 300, which was
an amazing first experience. In film, and especially in LA, the odds on anything getting to screen are against you. I was working on many other projects at the same time as 300, but that was the first one that went into production. What got it green-lit? The brilliance of Frank Miller’s graphic novel and Zack Snyder’s vision and determination. Who do you work with daily when developing dramas? The writers, first. Without a writer, there’s no show. And then the fantastic team at Vertigo: the producers – Allan Niblo and James Richardson – and the two development executives. You can’t read and manage everything, so having a team you trust and whose tastes and opinions you respect, especially when different to yours, is very important. What makes a good development producer? First, you have to be able to recognise the material that has the potential to become a show, no matter what form it
Sky
Head of development
