Imagine Television has participated in at least fifty productions and is associated with 20th Century Fox Television.
In August of 2010, Francie Calfo joined Imagine Entertainment partners Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, as President of Television. Along with EMPIRE, Calfo is an executive producer on FOX’s upcoming event series SHOTS FIRED, and the new cable series “Genius: Einstein,” based on Walter Isaacson’s best-selling book, which will be directed by Ron Howard, and is scheduled to premiere in 2017.
Previously at Imagine, she executive-produced the cable drama “The Bastard Executioner,” created by Kurt Sutter; FOX’s “Gang Related”; the cable series “Those Who Kill”; the network comedy “How to Live with Your Parents (for the Rest of Your Life)”; and the network drama “The Playboy Club.” Before arriving at Imagine, she had a multi-year deal as an independent producer at ABC Television Studios, where she sold and executive-produced numerous network comedy and drama pilots, including “Scoundrels.”
In the years prior, Calfo served as Executive Vice President of Development and Current Programming, ABC Primetime Entertainment, overseeing all scripted comedy and drama development, as well as current programming for the network. In that time, she and her team developed and shepherded some of primetime’s biggest hits, including “Desperate Housewives,” “Lost,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Ugly Betty” and “Brothers & Sisters.”
Calfo had her first successful stint as a producer in 2003-2004, during which she executive-produced the series “Life As We Know It,” which followed her work as a studio executive in drama development for Touchstone Television, first as a Vice President, then as Senior Vice President of Drama Series. At the studio, she oversaw all drama development and current drama programming, including “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and the critical hit “Alias.” Before her move to development, Calfo had been Vice President of Creative Affairs for Touchstone, overseeing all current programming, including “Home Improvement,” “Boy Meets World,” “Felicity,” “Sports Night” and “The PJs.” She first joined the Walt Disney Company in the Television Research department, where she rose through the ranks to Vice President of Research for Buena Vista Television, overseeing network television and television animation.
Calfo graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a degree in communications and a minor in business.
Married and the mother of three, she currently resides with her family in Santa Monica, CA.
According to a report Thursday Financial Times, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Eddy Cue, senior VP of internet software and services, recently met with Imagine for talks that covered a possible first-look distribution deal, an investment by Apple or an acquisition. But discussions between the two companies “fizzled out,” the newspaper reported.
Imagine co-chairman Michael Rosenberg, asked for comment, wrote in an email to Variety, “The story is not accurate and Imagine has no further comment.”
Apple declined to comment.
Speculation has swirled about the extent of Apple’s Hollywood ambitions of late. The tech giant has launched a new effort to procure or produce original scripted TV shows and possibly movies for the Apple Music subscription service, according to a Wall Street Journal report last month. And Apple and Time Warner execs met in late 2015, where the prospect of a merger was reportedly raised; AT&T now is in the midst of acquiring Time Warner for $85 billion.
Apple has cut deals for some original video content for Apple Music, its $10 monthly service that competes with the likes of Spotify and Google Play Music. Those include a spinoff of James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” from CBS, set to premiere in April, and reality-competition show “Planet of the Apps” featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, will.i.am and Jessica Alba as judges.
At a conference earlier this week, Cue indicated that Apple is not interested in buying a large media company or studio and said the original content strategy is in its nascent stages. “We’re trying different things. How fast it grows or where it goes remains to be seen,” he said Monday at the Code Media confab.
A year ago, Imagine received an investment of more than $100 million from the Raine Group, as first reported by Variety.
Nobody is loving the Peak TV moment more than Brian Grazer.
For a producer of boundless energy and curiosity, the spike in demand for distinctive, high-end series is a dream come true. Grazer’s Imagine Television has been invigorated by the breadth of material it is fielding for Fox (“24: Legacy,” “Shots Fired” and “Empire”) and National Geographic Channel (“Mars” and “Genius”).
And there is more to come. The recent $100 million investment by Raine Group in Imagine Entertainment, which Grazer heads with Ron Howard, has given the company greater flexibility to pursue TV and film projects on a bigger scale. Imagine TV has been based at 20th Century Fox TV since 2000, but it also produces projects outside of 20th TV’s aegis.
Grazer, an Oscar winner for 2001’s “A Beautiful Mind,” likens the creative environment in TV today to a bygone era of the film biz.
“The great writers and directors in TV today are really the embodiment of the great filmmakers of the 1960s, ‘70s and early ‘80s,” Grazer says, citing Hal Ashby, William Friedkin and Sidney Lumet as examples. “Movies have to be very, very high concept to differentiate themselves these days. … The character-driven shows on television right now are so in alignment with my tastes and interests.”
And also Grazer’s skill set. Howard Gordon, a longtime collaborator with Grazer on the “24” franchise, calls him “a quiet provocateur” who asks the right questions at the right moments.
“I’ve never known anyone so curious about the world,” said Fox Television Group chairman Dana Walden. “It’s not a coincidence that some of our most inspired projects have been collaborations with Brian and Ron at Imagine,” she said, pointing to “24,” “Arrested Development” and “Empire,” the blockbuster soap that just wrapped its second season as broadcast TV’s most-watched series in adults 18-49.
Grazer is also “exactly who you want working alongside you when there’s a problem to be solved or a piece of talent you want to attract,” Walden added. “He makes it his mission to get the job done.”
Being slightly removed from the day-to-day grind of writing and directing episodes gives Grazer a good vantage point to help keep a project on track. That’s a classic producer’s job in film, but one that hasn’t traditionally been as prevalent in TV. But it’s a role that is increasingly valuable given the 400-plus scripted series competing for the audience’s attention, Gordon said.
“Brian is always there to help us frame how the story is relevant and how we make it feel like a story that needs to be told today,” Gordon said. “24: Legacy” has been generating strong early buzz, particularly for star Corey Hawkins.
Moreover, Gordon attributes Grazer’s success as a producer to his ability to fight for his vision, but also remain open-minded and collaborative. The decision to field a new iteration of “24” without Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer came after much consideration, Gordon said.
“Brian will ask a thousand people ‘What do you think of this idea?,’ from the guy who’s parking his car to (Disney CEO) Bob Iger,” he said. “He is an astoundingly good listener, and that is something that is always in short supply in Hollywood.”
“Shots Fired” is another example. The series, which will get the midseason “event” treatment next year, revolves around the fallout from a racially charged police shooting of an unarmed man in a small Southern town. In this case, the cop is black and the victim is white, but the issues examined in the show are ripped from the headlines about Ferguson, Mo., Freddie Gray and Trayvon Martin.
“I enjoy digging around the culture to get a sense of what’s real to people,” Grazer said. “I always want our shows to be about themes that have real meaning to people.”
Grazer credits Walden with suggesting the subject of police shootings as an arena with potential. And it was Imagine TV president Francie Calfo who recruited writers Gina Prince-Bythewood and Reggie Rock Bythewood to tackle the difficult topic in such a compelling way that the project earned a straight-to-series order from Fox.
“Francie is spectacular in terms of aligning great writers to great themes,” Grazer said of the exec who has headed his TV wing since 2010.
“Mars” is also a big showcase for Nat Geo TV, slated to air in November. The series will blend documentary material about the Red Planet with a narrative story about twin Asian girls who aspire to become astronauts. The storyline shifts from the present to the future, where only one of the girls makes it to Mars.
“Genius” is a 10-hour narrative drama about Albert Einstein based on Walter Isaacson’s biography “Einstein: His Life and Universe.” Grazer’s Imagine partner Howard is set to direct the first episode. The series, targeted to premiere next spring, is designed as an anthology vehicle focusing on the life of a seminal thinker each season.
During the period when Imagine’s new TV series came together, Grazer was also busy shepherding four movies, including Universal’s upcoming Tom Cruise-starrer “Mena” and Sony’s “Inferno,” led by Tom Hanks. And Grazer published a book on his favorite subject: “A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life.”
As Imagine TV revs up with greater diversity than ever before, the difference between working in TV and movies has been thrown into sharp relief for Grazer.
“In television you know the economics going in — you know the size and shape of the box you’ll be working in for the program and the platform it will be on,” he said. “In movies, it’s all so open-ended. And then the system compresses your idea for a glacier into an ice cube. A ‘yes’ only means yes to the next step of putting it together. In television, a ‘yes’ pretty much means yes to doing it.”
Grazer is innately a searcher, someone who’s always hunting for the next big thing. But he allowed himself a moment to reflect on his company’s strides last month on the eve of the broadcast upfronts.
Grazer ran into Walden at New York’s Polo Bar the night before Fox presented its 2016-17 season schedule to advertisers. She showed him a newly cut trailer for “Shots Fired” on her smartphone. And then she broke the news that Fox released early the next day: “24: Legacy” had been selected to premiere behind Fox’s telecast of the 2017 Super Bowl.
“How do you beat that,” Grazer said, giddy at the prospect of the show getting a huge sendoff. “It’s so perfectly compatible.”
No matter what happens on the gridiron in Houston next Feb. 5, Brian Grazer has already won the Super Bowl.
Veteran TV executive/producer Francie Calfo is joining Imagine TV as president after more than 20 years at ABC. Calfo will replace David Nevins who is leaving to become entertainment president at Showtime, replacing Robert Greenblatt. Calfo’s deal with 20th TV where Imagine TV is based came after a couple of weeks of negotiations, mostly over financial terms.
Calfo most recently served as an ABC Studios-based producer, executive producing several pilots and one series, this summer’s struggling dramedy Scoundrels. Before that she was EVP at ABC, serving as entertainment president Stephen McPherson’s No.2. She segued into that job after spending a year as a producer, partnered with Stu Bloomberg when the two executive produced the short-lived ABC drama series Life As We Know It.
Calfo was previously an executive at ABC Studios’ predecessor Touchstone TV where she helped develop Alias and CSI
Calfo is the second ABC Studios-based producer to land a president-level job at a 20th TV-based company this week. On Tuesday, Bert Salke was named president of 20th TV’s cable/unscripted division
