About me
Julie Merson Bio
Julie Merson is an award-winning producer and senior entertainment executive who has been developing, packaging, selling and producing television for more than 15 years. She’s headed up development and programming at companies including Washington Square Films, 44 Blue and Rainn Wilson’s Soul Pancake where she created, developed, sold and oversaw 37 projects at 16 networks and streamers, including True Life, Sunset Daze, Strut, Kid Correspondent and Jailbirds for Netflix.
Over the years she has developed projects and collaborated with a wide array of writers, producers and production partners including Dwayne Johnson’s 7 Bucks, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way, LeBron James’ Springhill Entertainment, Marc Platt Productions, Jessica Biel’s Iron Ocean Films, and Blumhouse Productions.
Most recently, Julie served as Head of Television for Rainn Wilson’s company SoulPancake (a division of Participant Media) where she developed and sold scripted and unscripted content, and won the Environmental Media Award for best Children’s Program for her comedic series Kid Correspondent. Before joining SoulPancake, she served as Vice President of Development and Current Programming at 44 Blue, where she oversaw a team of 12 and won the GLAAD Award for Outstanding Unscripted Series for Strut which she produced with Whoopi Goldberg. Before joining 44 Blue, Julie ran Stacy London’s production company, Super Long Play, and headed up the TV division at Washington Square Films. In her freelance days she worked in house MTV and VH1, was nominated for Emmy Award for Best Documentary Program for True Life: Matthews Murder, and produced and directed music videos and documentaries for artists including Dave Matthews Band, Jay-Z, Pharrell, and Mary J. Blige.
Over the course of her career, Julie has created and produced shows for Netflix, E!, TLC, Lifetime, Bravo, Oxygen, MTV, VH1, A&E, Discovery, Science, Bravo, WeTV, Fuse, YouTube Originals and PBS. She has also pitched, developed and worked closely with buyers and executives at Apple, Disney, Hulu, Amazon, Fox, NBC, Showtime and HBO.
She recently served as Developmental Editor on Elizabeth Pryor’s book Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word and Me for Simon & Schuster, which has been optioned for a feature film. She is also developing Madeliene Smitherberg’s memoir about her life in late night television and creating the Daily Show, which they are developing for television.
She is a proud member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild of America.
