The Development Team 2019
By Michael Smith
Yes, Verité Entertainment is world-renowned for its voiceover service work, but also housed deep within the walls of Verité HQ is a top secret, heavily-armed and booby-trapped room. This room can only be entered by a select few – the Verité Development Team.
Lead by President and Chief Creative Officer Donald Roman Lopez, these select and fortunate few, develop original content for Verité’s VIP, also known as Verité Intellectual Property. In reality, there’s no heavily-armed room. Instead, it’s a sun-drenched, modern conference room with glass doors that connect to the Executive suit. The views from here are awe inspiring, overlooking Macarthur Park, reaching all the way to the Santa Monica Mountains in the southwest, to the world-famous Hollywood Sign and Griffith Observatory in the north, and far out to the snowcapped peak of Mt. Baldy in the northeast. It is with this spectacular backdrop that the Development and Creative team at Verité are hard at work developing projects in animation, live action and innovative media for a variety of target audiences.
At the beginning of 2019, Joseph Ferrante joined Verité Entertainment as the in-house Development Producer. Known to everyone simply as “Joe,” he is in charge of ushering projects through Verite’s Creative Development Process so they will be ready for packaging and financing. Joe has worked for Comcast, Viacom, Warner Bothers, NBCUniversal and the Writers Guild of America. An accomplished screenwriter, he’s won numerous awards for his screenplays, including a pitch competition that sent him to the Swiss Alps to stay in a well-known haunted castle where he wrote a horror feature. Joe has pitched and sold shows as well as several options.
In addition to Development, Joe writes the English language adaptations for several of our dubbing projects. Although he is the newest member of the Verité Team, he has a history of working with Co-Founders, Donald Roman Lopez and René Veilleux long before Verité Entertainment was created. Joe’s creative inspiration is extensive and diverse, having lived and worked all over Asia and Europe. Joe has also produced two TV shows for the Japanese network, Fuji TV.
Jack Kelly graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a Bachelor of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Formerly, the Development Assistant, Jack was recently promoted to Development Coordinator. Tasked with tracking each one of our co-productions, he is heavily relied upon to know the ins and outs of everything development at Verité. His day to day consists of coordinating conversations between Verite and broadcasters, as well as Verite’s various partners. Jack is also the first filter in the evaluation process of new material that comes through Verite’s Development Department.
The excitement at Verité Entertainment never stops! Verité has projects scheduled to be pitched to major networks and streaming services throughout the year. The Development Team worked very hard in 2018 getting a few projects set up, which we will be announcing sometime in the summer or fall of 2019.