JP Richards Apple TV + Head of Film Marketing Strategy Former Warner Bros. Marketing Director – Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: JP Richards was appointed head of Apple TV + film marketing strategy. He will report to head of video marketing Chris Van Amburg. Richards will begin work next month, when his departure from Warner Bros is official. Last November, he stepped down as co-president of global marketing for Warner Bros, one of several highly regarded marketing executives who came out of the restructuring of WarnerMedia. Marketing chief Blair Rich and EVP Marketing Animation and Family Films Jim Gallagher also left. Josh Goldstine, who was a consultant on the list of Warner Bros. films to be released simultaneously on HBO Max, was appointed to head the department earlier this month.

Richards will help lead the growing ambitions of Apple’s original films. Richards spent six years at Warner Bros, starting as an EVP for WW Digital Marketing and then elevated to an EVP for WW Marketing and Chief Digital Strategist. He was named Co-Head in 2019. He came to Warner Bros after 12 years at Universal and was a senior vice president of digital marketing when he left.

Among the areas he helped guide were Digital Marketing and Media, Strategy and Integrated Marketing, Partnerships and Promotional Alliances, Creative Content, Multi-Cultural Marketing, Brand Content and Media and Marketing / Creative Services. While there, he oversaw campaigns for Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Joker, A Star is Born, IT Chapter 1 and 2, They Don’t Get Old, The Lego Movies, The Conjuring Series, Creed and Creed 2. In his 12 years at Universal, he created digital campaigns to The Bourne Identity, Fast and furious and My favorite evil franchises, among other films.

Apple is growing after its launch a year ago under the heads of Worldwide Video Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht. Last week, he spent a lot on the global rights of the package Kitbag, which Ridley Scott will direct with Joaquin Phoenix in the role of French leader Napoleon Bonaparte. This follows the agreement that Apple Studios made last fall to acquire worldwide rights to Emancipation, with Antoine Fuqua directing Will Smith in an action thriller with a collage script by Willam N. about Peter’s harrowing escape, a fugitive slave forced to overcome cold-blooded hunters and the relentless swamps of Louisiana on a tortuous journey north , where he joined the Union Army. Apple has also moved on to Greyhound, the second world war drama that Tom Hanks wrote and starred in for director Aaron Schneider, which premiered last July. AND Flower Moon Killers, the adaptation of more than $ 180 million of David Grann’s book that Eric Roth wrote and which has Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio scheduled to star. Beyond Greyhound, Apple has several films in the award season, including now directed by Sofia Coppola On the rocks with Rashida Jones and Bill Murray, the docu Boys Statethe excited Wolfwalkers, the next cherry, a distressing drama that is the first film directed by Joe and Anthony Russo after Avengers: Endgame. Tom Holland and Ciara Bravo; and the documentary directed by Werner Herzog Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds.

There are also Ptolemy Gray’s Last Days, a new limited series of six episodes starring and executive produced by Oscar nominee Samuel L. Jackson, and based on the touching novel by bestselling author Walter Mosley; Snow Blind, a new feature film, with Jake Gyllenhaal hired to star and Gustav Möller hired to direct; Swan song, an innovative film starring Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris; Air Masters, a new limited drama series from Apple Studios and executive production from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television and Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s Playtone; a new dramatic series by Team Downey and Adam Perlman; and High Desert, a new comedy series starring Patricia Arquette, who will also executive produce alongside director Ben Stiller.