‘One Strange Rock’ Producer Nutopia Hires Spelthorne’s Matt Edmonds

EXCLUSIVE: Jane Root’s Nutopia has hired Matt Edmonds, a former executive at Sacha Baron Cohen’s production company Spelthorne Community TV, as it ramps up its move to broaden its factual programming slate.

Edmonds, who was previously Head of Factual Entertainment at the company, which the Who Is America? star established with Andrew Newman in 2015, joins in the new role of Vice President of Unscripted Formats.

He worked on the Showtime series as well as titles such as Let’s Talk About Sex and before that worked at Rumpus Media, where he co-created shows such as BBC and Netflix’s Asian Provocateur with Romesh Ranganathan and Comedy Central and Netflix’s Joel and Nish vs The World.

Edmonds has been tasked with expanding the company’s slate of popular factual series and formats. Best known for making large scale premium docs, the company’s recent orders including Babies for Netflix, Disney+’s The World According to Jeff Goldblum, The Last Czars for Netflix, and One Strange Rock for National Geographic.

Nutopia, which is currently making season two of One Strange Rock with Will Smith and Limitless, with Chris Hemsworth, also for Nat Geo, has also promoted two of its executives.

Current Head of Development Simon Willgoss has been promoted to Executive Producer and Executive VP of Development. He will continue to oversee the company’s development slate and has been tasked with managing its relationships with companies such as Westbrook.

Sam Fernandes has also been promoted to Deputy Head of Development. In this role Fernandes will help oversee the day-to-day running of the development slate across all genres. Joining Nutopia as a development researcher in 2015, Fernandes has worked across titles such as Babies, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, and The ‘80s Greatest and The ‘90s Greatest for National Geographic. She also was a producer on the feature documentary Detroit: Comeback City for History Channel and helped develop upcoming National Geographic series Limitless and One Strange Rock 2.

“It’s an honor to join Jane and the incredible team at Nutopia. Their track record of creating spectacular programming that breaks new ground is second to none. Together we’ll deliver premium factual storytelling with a good dollop of mischief. I can’t wait,” said Edmonds.

Nutopia CEO Jane Root added, “Both Simon and Sam have been crucial to Nutopia’s success over the past few years. Simon is an outstanding executive and Sam has become a key part of our development team. We are delighted to have them and our talented new hire Matt to continue our push into popular factual.”