EXCLUSIVE: Noah Media, producer of Netflix’s 14 Peaks and Sky’s Villeneuve Pironi, has restructured to focus on international docs and laid off a small number of staff.
The London outfit has in the past few months transitioned from a “UK sports-based production company into an international documentary producer,” according to a statement from CEO and co-founder John McKenna.
“This will see us transition from a staff-based to a more freelance-based model, in line with the norm across the factual production space,” said McKenna. “This has unfortunately meant some redundancies in the past few months for some employees we think are fantastic colleagues and people.”
For the year to March 31 2023, Noah had around 45 staff, according to its latest accounts. It will offer “freelance project-specific contracts” for employees who have lost jobs where possible, McKenna added, and he said this has already happened for some of those laid off.
“We firmly believe Noah is well placed in the current market,” added McKenna. “We currently have a wide range of global documentaries in production, working with international names and subjects, and partnering with some of the most high-profile content creators in the U.S. market.”
Noah makes sports shows and premium docs including the likes of Netflix’s 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible about a Nepalese mountaineer’s incredible climbing feat, along with projects on Ricky Hatton, Arsène Wenger, Jack Charlton and the England cricket team.
The company raised $2.7m from private investors including former XIX Entertainment president James Clayton, Hollywood entertainment lawyer Kevin Yorn and former Wired editor David Rowan in 2021. Just over a year later, it launched a multi-million dollar content fund.
In February of this year, Deadline revealed that one of the UK’s biggest sports producers, IMG Media, was laying off around 5% of staff amid tricky market conditions and industry-wide rising production costs.