ViacomCBS has created a new role in the company, hiring literary agent Eddie Gamarra as VP of literary affairs for Nickelodeon and Awesomeness.
The idea is to improve the company’s ability to mine the world’s rich vein of literary content for ideas that translate well into TV shows and movies. In this new-to-the-company position, Gamarra will be responsible for sourcing and assessing books at every publishing stage in order to decide what to option and develop.
So, if you’re a publisher wanting to option books for film or TV production, you’d do well to update your Rolodex right about now.
Gamarra comes to the role with a perfect blend of experience in both publishing and film/TV production. He previously worked as Nickelodeon’s VP of studio business development, overseeing animated and live-action features for TV, theatrical and SVOD platforms.
Prior to that time, Gamarra was a literary manager at The Gotham Group, focusing on kids and family content for more than 10 years.
Over the years Gamarra has worked with a several bestselling authors and illustrators, as well as Oscar and Emmy winners and nominees. He has executive producer credits on projects including Fox’s The Maze Runner movie trilogy; Henry Selick’s stop-motion Netflix feature Wendell and Wild; and Jerry Spinelli’s Disney+ feature Stargirl.
ViacomCBS says Gamarra will be based in Los Angeles, and tasked with unearthing literary works that make sense for both live-action and animated TV shows and movies. He will report directly to Shauna Phelan and Zack Olin, who head up ViacomCBS Kids and Family’s live-action scripted content team for Nickelodeon, Awesomeness and all of their third-party platforms.
The hiring of Gamarra appears to make a lot of sense for the companies, both of which have produced several shows or movies based on Young Adult and children’s books, including Peter Rabbit, Adventures of Paddington Bear, the book series Big Nate, Light As A Feather, and the 2018 Netflix series To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before.