UK head becomes chief creative officer with Courtney White promoted to president
Wheelhouse UK’s head Glenn Hugill has been promoted to chief creative officer for the entire indie as well as president of its new international hub, as part of a rejig of its senior leadership team.
Alongside his elevation, Courtney White has also been promoted to president of the Brent Montgomery-founded outfit.
In his expanded role, London-based Hugill will be tasked with overseeing the creative development and production of global formats under the Wheelhouse Studios banner, the international content hub for which he is now also president.
Wheelhouse is targeting formats including “noisy competition series, gripping social experiments and high-octane game shows”. Since he joined the US outfit in 2023 as chief content officer of its nascent UK operations, the former Possessed chief credits include Million Dollar Secret (Netflix), Got to Get Out (w/t) (Hulu) and Last Bite Hotel (Food Network).
He will work closely with newly appointed Wheelhouse Entertainment president White, who joined the company in 2022 with the launch of her lifestyle indie Butternut, which is behind Last Bite Hotel. She will continue to lead the latter, while expanding her role to oversee all of Wheelhouse US’ labels, including Spoke Stuios, Twist and Wheelhouse DNA.
She will also assist in managing the indie’s physical production partnerships, including chef David Chang’s Majordomo Media and NBA star Anthony Edwards’ Three Fifths Media.
White previously served as president of Food Network and general manager of HGTV.
She and Hugill will work closely together and will continue to report to chief exec Montgomery. Their promotions come in the wake of the launch of Twist, a new Wheelhouse label run by former Discovery exec Jane Latman.
The indie group’s labels are behind high-profile series America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, American Murder: Laci Peterson and Wags to Riches (all for Netflix) and Celebrity Family Food Battle (Roku).
Montgomery said: “Our goal is to always blaze new trails and by fortifying our core business with the incredible leadership of Courtney and Glenn, who both in short order developed and executed our most exciting slate in company history, it will allow others of us to focus even further on other key priorities including sports, YouTube and the wider creator economy.”
Hugill added: ““Brent sold me on coming to Wheelhouse to help build out a team of trans-Atlantic creative Avengers and that’s exactly what we’re doing. We collaborate differently to share our superpowers across the entire group and it’s just thrilling to have the ability to plug into best-in-class business partners across the company – all experts in their genres.
“Meanwhile, the ability to now hatch our biggest and boldest global ideas out of the new international Wheelhouse Studios is a total homerun. Which is a baseball term, as I understand it.”
White said she has benefitted from the indie’s “total commitment” to collaboration and is looking forward to “deepen my contribution to the company and its immensely talented teams as we continue to forge new business paths, ignite groundbreaking partnerships and create hit content that leads the pop culture conversation”.
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