NBCU LAUNCH, the umbrella brand that houses the comprehensive inclusion efforts across the company’s entertainment television portfolio, has named the 2024-26 class of its trailblazing scripted directing program, the NBCU LAUNCH TV Directors Program. The 2024-26 class and the NBCU series they are attached to are Parisa Barani (“Law & Order”), Winter Dunn (“The Irrational”), Nina Kramer (“St. Denis Medical”) and Liz Sargent (“Chicago Med”).
Founded in 2009, NBCU’s scripted directing program (now called the NBCU LAUNCH TV Directors Program) gives experienced directors with distinct points of view their break into episodic television. The program supports the company’s goal of producing authentic stories with talent whose lived experiences inform their unique creative visions.
It’s the first scripted directing initiative in the television industry to guarantee that participants will helm at least one episode by the culmination of the program. Directors shadow on two episodes of an NBCU scripted series ahead of sitting in the director’s chair themselves.
Starting with this new class, NBCU LAUNCH added more learning and development opportunities to prepare the program directors to helm their first episode of scripted television.
Each program director has been paired with an alumnus who will serve as their mentor. SJ Main Muñoz (“Fear the Walking Dead”), Brenna Malloy (“On Call”), Kim Nguyen (“Survival of the Thickest”) and Dinh Thai (“Wu-Tang: An American Saga”), all of whom are working television directors following their time in the program, will help guide the new program directors through the process of helming their episodes.
Additionally, NBCU LAUNCH hosted a six-day intensive workshop with acclaimed television directors Mary Lou Belli and Bethany Rooney. During in-person and virtual sessions held over two weekends, they led participants through a range of exercises on practical sets aimed at honing their creative visions, technical craft, and communication and interpersonal skills.
To be eligible for the program that is open to experienced directors of all backgrounds, candidates are required to have directing experience in their respective fields, including feature-length films, short films, music videos, commercials, digital content and unscripted programming. Candidates can have no more than one scripted television directing credit. All eligibility requirements can be found at the NBCU LAUNCH website.
At the culmination of the lengthy selection process, showrunners and executive producers from the participating shows chose the candidate that best suited the creative direction of their show.
NBCU LAUNCH will open applications for the next class in second half of 2025.
