Last year, when Gaumont, the world’s oldest film company, decided to extend its venerable brand name to the production and distribution of television content, it enlisted former NBC executive Katie O’Connell to lead those efforts. As the CEO of Gaumont International Television (GIT) in Los Angeles, O’Connell oversees a portfolio of highly anticipated projects, among them the NBC midseason replacement Hannibal. The upcoming series, starring Mads Mikkelsen as Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Hugh Dancy as FBI profiler Will Graham, was developed for television by Bryan Fuller, just one of several top-notch creatives that GIT has partnered with: Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, writers of Skyfall, have been tapped to pen the new series Barbarella, which is being co-produced with Canal+. And Eli Roth is behind the GIT-produced Hemlock Grove, which is slated to make its debut on Netflix this April. Producing brand-defining content with universal themes is a key mandate at GIT, says O’Connell, who recently spoke with World Screen about the company’s approach to developing scripted projects for the global market.