Murdoch, Snider and Featherstone team to launch Sister

Jane Featherstone, Elisabeth Murdoch, Stacey Snider

Elisabeth Murdoch, Stacey Snider and Jane Featherstone have teamed up to launch Sister, a global production and development company working across TV and film.

Sister is based on the foundation of Featherstone’s scripted indie, Chernobyl producer Sister Pictures, and will have offices in Los Angeles and London. Its corporate HQ is in the UK.

Murdoch, Snider and Featherstone are co-owners and co-founders of Sister.

Murdoch, who founded superindie Shine Group in 2001 and sold it to her father’s 21st Century Fox in 2011, becomes executive chairman of Sister, and is reportedly putting up most of the financing for the new company.

Acclaimed TV producer Featherstone, who ran Broadchurch indie Kudos before founding Sister Pictures and scoring a major hit with Chernobyl, becomes head of Sister London.

Stacey Snider, the former chairman of Hollywood studio 20th Century Fox, is global CEO and head of Sister LA.

The combination of Featherstone’s drama track-record, Snider’s Hollywood industry expertise and relationships, and Murdoch’s financial resource and track record in building production companies is likely to make Sister a formidable player in the international market.

Sister London will fully incorporate the Sister Pictures team, including executive producers Naomi de Pear (The Power, Flowers, Don’t Forget the Driver), Chris Fry (Chernobyl, Giri/Haji) and producer Katie Carpenter (Flowers, The Bisexual).  Dan Isaacs, current COO of Sister Pictures, becomes COO of Sister London.

Sister Pictures currently has 26 staff in its Clerkenwell offices in London. In 2019, it produced 25 hours of scripted television per year, which will rise to 32 hours per year in 2020.

Murdoch and Featherstone have worked together before. In 2007, Murdoch’s Shine Group acquired Kudos Productions, which Featherstone ran. Featherstone rose to become chairman of Shine TV as well as CEO of Kudos. Both left Shine in 2014.

Murdoch and Snider knew each other when Snider ran 20th Century Fox, the movie studio owned by Rupert Murdoch that is now part of Disney.

In a statement, Murdoch, Snider and Featherstone said the new business would be “fiercely independent” and said they “now care most about the quality of work we produce – its integrity, its purpose, and our ability to clear the way for singular talent who have something to say.”

“The ever-changing entertainment landscape brings with it complexity, and success here requires experience, deep-rooted relationships, creative intuition and vision. We are fortunate to be well capitalised, to have the independence and confidence to write our own rules, to be bold and bespoke in the choices we make, and to utilise our resources to champion visionary storytellers. And to those storytellers we say – come and be brave, come and be rebellious, come and do your best work.”

Forthcoming Sister titles include season two of Emmy Award-winning writer Abi Morgan’s The Split for BBC One, Giri/Haji for BBC Two/Netflix, the adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s The Power for Amazon, and Adam Kay’s adaptation of his best-seller This Is Going To Hurt for the BBC.