MRC has promoted veteran leader and current chief business officer Scott Tenley to chief executive officer, the company announced on Thursday.
Tenley’s elevation comes seven months after he successfully negotiated the company’s separation from Valence Media, reconstituting MRC as the premier independent film and television studio.
In his new role, Tenley will oversee the studio’s film, TV and non-fiction divisions, strategic partnerships, as well as all shared service functions of the company, including finance, legal and HR.
As part of the new executive structure, founders Modi Wiczyk and Asif Satchu will become Chairmen.
“Scott Tenley has a hand in nearly every single deal, every single accomplishment at MRC over the past 16 years. He has blazed trails in almost every facet of our business, from selling House of Cards to Netflix to setting up The Academy of Country Music Awards on Amazon Prime Video, to ever-evolving credit facilities, equity arrangements and beyond,” Wiczyk and Satchu said in a statement. “But Scott is so much more than a deal person: he is our cultural heart, our loudest cheerleader, our most ferocious defender, and our ambassador to the community. Scott is an agent of change and the business cannot succeed without him. He is the conductor that brings every division together and redefines collaboration that you don’t see anywhere else. In an industry often beset by selfishness and self-interest, Scott makes it fun and safe to share.”
Tenley added: “For the last 16 years I have been so lucky to be surrounded by the smartest and hardest working colleagues as we have built an amazing business, working with the best and brightest artists and storytellers. In the simplest terms, like them, I find joy in making great movies and TV shows – it is what we do best at MRC. I am so grateful to Modi, Asif and all of my colleagues and partners who have given me the rarest of opportunities to play a small part in making iconic films and TV shows.”
Tenley most recently led the team that sold Peacock the series “Poker Face,” which has become one of the platform’s biggest hits with Season 2 already ordered. He also was critical in providing strategic guidance in the deal to sell Chloe Domont’s “Fair Play” to Netflix in the biggest sale of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the sale of Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” to Amazon, and securing a second season and spinoff of the hit Amazon Prime Video series “The Terminal List.” In 2021 he oversaw the sale of The Academy of Country Music Awards to Amazon, the first major Hollywood awards show sold to a streaming service. The 2018 joint venture Tenley completed between MRC and UTA to create Civic Center Media, one of the earliest agency affiliated production entities, has resulted in critically-acclaimed television shows including “The Great” on Hulu, “The Terminal List” on Amazon, “The Outsider” on HBO and “The Shrink Next Door” on Apple TV +.
A graduate of The University of Pennsylvania and the UCLA School of Law, Tenley arrived at MRC in 2007 following a successful run as a corporate entertainment attorney in private practice at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP in Los Angeles. From 2007 – 2015 he served as President of Business & Legal Affairs and Operations, 2015-2019 as COO, and in 2019 was promoted to his most recent position as Chief Business Officer of Valence Media/MRC.