Amazon Studios Head of Event Series Sharon Tal Yguado was promoted amid turmoil at the company which started with major clashes with Hollywood and recently continued with the resignation of its now-former president Roy Price amid sexual harassment allegations. Ms. Tal Yguado now oversees all scripted programming at the firm, including comedy, drama, and virtual reality content, the tech giant confirmed in late October. Her newly started reign is already facing many challenges, a new report by The Information suggests, indicating that it’s still unclear whether the interim head of the unit Albert Cheng who also serves as its Chief Operating Officer will frequently seek to overrule her programming authority seeing how his business experience lies in other aspects of the industry.
Ms. Tal Yguado reportedly had some disagreements with former comedy and drama chief Joe Lewis who resigned shortly following Mr. Price’s departure from the company, with sources indicating that certain projects which fell under both of their jurisdictions generated discord between the two. With the departure of Mr. Lewis, the Israeli-born content programmer now yields significantly more authority at Amazon Studios, at least for the time being, with the company previously describing her expanded position as being interim in nature. Even if Ms. Tal Yguado ends up sharing some of her newly increased executive power with future hires at Amazon Studios, it’s possible she’ll still largely be in charge of the firm’s 2018 multi-billion content budget that’s set to be increased even further.
Ms. Tal Yguado’s portfolio includes The Walking Dead which she convinced her former employer Fox to fund alongside AMC, as well as another horror series Outcast. Her main reason for leaving Fox for Amazon stemmed from a desire to personally decide on commissioning projects instead of having to lobby for them with U.S. networks, according to sources cited by The Information. That background may lead Amazon‘s new most senior content programmer to go through with some seemingly unconventional concepts, not unlike how The Walking Dead TV show was seen when the idea was originally pitched to media executives in 2009. For the time being, Ms. Tal Yguado seemingly remains the top authority at Amazon Studios in regards to content programming, with Mr. Cheng presumably still being focused on the business aspect of the division which has yet to establish itself as a true Hollywood heavyweight despite already committing billions to that endeavor.