Sony Eyes Relaunching TriStar Television Banner Run By Suzanne Patmore Gibbs
After being dormant for more than a decade, I hear the TriStar Television brand is ready to make a comeback as a boutique production unit within Sony Pictures Television. I hear it would be run by Suzanne Patmore Gibbs who would segue to the new position after a three-year stint as EVP drama development for Sony Pictures Television. The new division is expected to tackle a small number of projects, including Sony’s 1970s drama The Good Girls Revolt, which is being picked up to pilot by Amazon.
As head of TriStar TV, Patmore Gibbs would continue to report to SPT presidents of programming and production Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg. Patmore Gibbs’s top lieutenants, SVP drama development Jason Clodfelter and Chris Parnell, are expected to co-head SPT’s drama department going forward. A rep for SPT could not be reached for comment.
Under Patmore Gibbs, Sony TV developed NBC’s The Blacklist, which has landed a rich off-network deal with Netflix, and The Night Shift, as well as the upcoming The Player on NBC and Houdini and Doyle on Fox and a number of cable and digital series, including Outlander on Starz, Powers on Playstation as well as Bloodline and the upcoming The Get Down on Netflix.
Before joining Sony TV, Patmore Gibbs served as EVP scripted programming for ABC Entertainment Group, shepherding such series as Revenge, Once Upon a Time, Scandal, Suburgatory, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty and Grey’s Anatomy; as SVP drama development at Touchstone Television; and as SVP of development at Bedford Falls.
TriStar TV was originally launched by TriStar Pictures in 1986 in collaboration with two of the biggest indie TV production banners of that time, Stephen J. Cannell Productions and Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions. Its best known series was probably 1992 NBC comedy Mad About You. Following the 1989 Sony acquisition of TriStar and Columbia Pictures and their TV divisions, the TriStar Television brand continued to be used until Sony’s TV production operation was renamed Sony Pictures TV in 2002.
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