James Farrell, the head of international original productions at Amazon MGM Studios, is leaving the company after a decade to start his own company. His new venture will focus on the production of international young adult (YA) films, which he sees as the perfect opportunity to take over after the huge success of Culpa TuyaPrime Video's most-watched international original production. Farrell has announced in an internal memo that he will be founding the company with "great friends in the industry", noting that there will be plenty of time to talk about these plans.
Farrell joined Amazon ten years ago after moving to the company from Sony Pictures in Tokyo. At the beginning of his time at Amazon, he was involved in projects such as LOL: Last One Laughing and later helped to drive international expansion, particularly in India, Latin America and Europe. Under his leadership, teams were set up in a total of 17 different locations, producing over 150 original productions per year.
In his farewell email, Farrell recognised some of the key achievements of his career at Amazon, including Maxton Hall, Clarkson's Farm, Culpa Tuya and Apocalypse Z. Especially Culpa Tuya has been an outstanding success and has helped strengthen Amazon's international originals programme. Farrell also highlighted the importance of working with international leaders such as Javi, Nicole, Tara and many others who have been involved in growing the global programme since the early days.
An important point in his career was his leadership principle, which he described as "bias for action", i.e. the principle of always staying active and driving innovation. Farrell is proud of the progress the team has made in recent years and announced that he will continue to pursue this principle in his new company.
His last day at Amazon will be 25 February. In the meantime, he has invited his colleagues to get in touch with him, either before or after his departure. A successor for Farrell has not yet been named, and until then his team will report directly to Jen Salke, Head of Amazon MGM Studios.
