Amazon poaches HBO comedy exec

Amazon Studios has hired HBO exec Nick Hall to become its head of comedy development.

At the production arm of e-commerce giant Amazon, Hall will oversee development of all half-hour comedy, and report to Joe Lewis, head of half-hour TV series.

At HBO, he was senior VP, comedy, working within the team of Casey Bloys, who was recently promoted to president of programming for the US cable channel.

His departure comes after those of the long-serving programming chief Michael Lombardo, whom Bloys replaced, and drama chief Michael Ellenberg, and the recent promotions of drama execs Francesca Orsi and David Levine.

Hall has worked on HBO series such as Looking, The Comeback, How to Make it in America and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is set to launch a ninth season five years after the previous season went out. Having joined in 2008, he was upped to VP in 2011 and SVP in 2014.

Before HBO, he worked at the channel’s Time Warner studio cousin, Warner Bros. Television, where he was manager of comedy development.

Amazon plays comedies such as Transparent and Catastrophe.