London’s Garden Studios Hires Sky Studios Top Exec Bee Devine as COO

Garden Studios in London, which opened its doors in early 2021, has hired Sky Studios top executive Bee Devine as chief operating officer. She will start the role in June and report to Garden Studios founder and CEO Thomas Hoegh.

Devine has worked as director of content operations at Sky Studios, the production arm of European pay-TV and technology giant Sky, since May 2021 after serving as director of operational transformation since May 2020. Before that, Devine held various other positions at Sky, including as program director, content resource planning and as group metadata director, following years in TV production and broadcast facilities management across the independent sector. Comcast has owned Sky since its $39 billion acquisition in 2018.

The Garden Studios campus is a more than 300,000-square-foot hub in Park Royal in the northwest of the British capital. It includes four soundstages of between 4,800 square feet and 23,250 square feet, alongside workshops, technical facilities, fully equipped offices, and a virtual production stage. More soundstages are in development. The facility has been home to productions from the likes of Netflix, Amazon Studios, Banijay, StudioCanal, Apple, and BBC Studios.

A studio boom in the U.K. has continued in recent years. Last month, the U.K. government unveiled a 40 percent corporate tax relief for film and TV studio facilities until 2034, introduced a new independent film incentive of 40 percent, and announced an increase to an existing incentive for visual effects. “We have become Europe’s largest film and TV production center, with Idris Elba, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom all filming their latest productions here,” U.K. chancellor, or finance minister, Jeremy Hunt said at the time. “Studio space in the U.K. has doubled in the last three years and at the current rate of expansion, next year we will be second only to Hollywood globally.”

Hoegh lauded Devine for bringing to Garden Studios “high-level production, operations, and technology experience as we further grow and develop our Park Royal facility and team.”

Said Devine: “I’ve loved my time at Sky, but this was too good an opportunity to miss. Thomas and the great team at Garden Studios have built a solid foundation, technology expertise and reputation in the last three years. I cannot wait to be a part of the team and contribute to the innovation, sustainability, talent development, and inclusion ambitions of this impressive creative hub.”