Jeremy Kramer Circling Top Job at Paramount Players

Brent Lang
·1 min read

Paramount Pictures is looking to revive Paramount Players, a sleepy label it launched to back properties with a contemporary feel in 2017. Jeremy Kramer, a 20th Century Fox executive, is at the top of a shortlist to lead the shingle, but there’s no deal in place.

If Kramer gets tapped, it will mark a reunion with Emma Watts, the motion picture group president who joined Paramount in June after a long run at Fox. Watts had soured on the direction that Fox was taking after it was purchased by The Walt Disney Company and was convinced to make the leap by Paramount chairman Jim Gianopulos, the former Fox studios chief. Other Fox veterans to follow Gianopulos to Paramount include distribution head Chris Aronson and global communications head Chris Petrikin.

Paramount Players was created by Brian Robbins, the founder and former CEO of AwesomenessTV. But when Robbins left the studio to run Nickelodeon in 2018, its output diminished. Paramount Players’ list of films includes “Dora and the Lost City of Gold,” “What Men Want,” “Body Cam” and “Playing With Fire.”

Watts is also looking to hire a new president at Paramount and has been talking to candidates. Mike Ireland, a senior VP of production at Fox and another former colleague of Watts, is a contender for the job. It’s a little unclear how that job would ultimately manifest and the position could be a co-president role.

Before joining Fox in 2010, Kramer was a partner with Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld at Red Hour Films. He also worked with Noah Baumbach and was an executive at Miramax.

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