Julia Franz has been tapped to become senior vice president of comedy at Fox Entertainment, while Daniel Weidenfeld will be named senior vice president of animation at the network, according to a source.
Franz and Weidenfeld will report to Fox Entertainment president of entertainment Michael Thorn.
“Both Julia and Daniel are fantastic executives with tremendous relationships throughout the creative community. As Fox Entertainment doubles down on our commitment both to live-action and animated comedy, these two executives will play key roles in these initiatives,” Thorn said in a statement.
Franz comes to the network from Spectrum Originals, where she was head of development and helped launch the platform’s first original series, L.A.’s Finest, and helped develop the Mad About You revival that is set to premiere in November.
Her career kicked off at Touchstone Television (which would later become ABC Studios), where she was a creative executive, working her way up from junior programming exec to head of comedy development and then head of creative. In that role, she oversaw comedy and drama development, in addition to current programming, working on Grey’s Anatomy, Criminal Minds, Scrubs, Lost, Desperate Housewives, Cougar Town and Ugly Betty, and other series.
Weidenfeld, meanwhile, has spent the past decade as a writer and producer, working on Adult Swim’s Lazor Wulf, Brad Neely’s Harg Nallin’ Sclopio Peepio, China, IL and The Eric Andre Show; TBS’ The Pound Hole; and Netflix’s Trigger Warning with Killer Mike. He served as vice president of content development of TV and New Media at Generate, LLC between 2008 and 2010.
Fox is adding two animated series, Bless the Harts and Duncanville, to its long-running shows The Simpsons, Family Guy and Bob’s Burger’s in 2019-20 and ramping up development on other animated projects. Weidenfeld will oversee all animated production and development both for the network and third parties.