A Bristol natural history production company behind America the Beautiful and The Epic Adventures of Bertie Gregory, founded by Vanessa Berlowitz and Mark Linfield.
Wildstar Films is a Bristol-based company that makes premium wildlife and natural history programmes. Its work includes America the Beautiful, The Epic Adventures of Bertie Gregory and America's National Parks for Disney+ and National Geographic. It is also making feature films for Disneynature and the series Queens and Sentient, the latter with Darren Aronofsky's company Protozoa Pictures.
The company was co-founded by Vanessa Berlowitz and Mark Linfield, whose credits include Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and Disney feature films. We did not find a formal mission statement. They have said that Wildstar is committed to attracting the best talent to the company, and Fremantle's Mandy Chang described it as having strong core values and people who take huge pride in their work.
Wildstar's registered address is Embassy House, Queen's Avenue, Bristol BS8 1SB, and its trade coverage calls it Bristol-based. That fits with Bristol's reputation as a centre for natural history film-making, which also includes the BBC Natural History Unit. A company-data site lists about 150 employees, but that is an outside estimate. In November 2022 Fremantle bought a 51 per cent majority stake in Wildstar, which continues to operate under its own name.
Senior hires reported in 2022 include Doug Mackay-Hope, who came from the BBC Natural History Unit, as senior vice president of development and production, Juli Porter as chief operating officer and Anwar Mamon as staff executive producer. Award-winning editor Nigel Buck joined as executive editor. He said he would look for and develop under-represented female editing talent, and train editors and edit producers from diverse backgrounds, supporting the company's aim to broaden the talent pool.
Wildlife series need producers, directors, camera and sound teams, researchers, editors and production managers. Mackay-Hope said he likes to push boundaries, and the company's own descriptions are of fast growth. That is the company's own framing. The deal with Fremantle in November 2022 was described as a strategic partnership, and the founders said they shared Fremantle's ambition of working with top talent to make genre-defining shows. Wildstar focuses on premium factual content for global streamers and broadcasters. Its senior team also included people with backgrounds at the BBC Natural History Unit and at the production company Whisper.
Website: www.wildstarfilms.com
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