Type Subsidiary Headquarters Los Angeles | Website lightworkersmedia.com Founded 2011 | |
Key people Mark Burnett & Roma Downey Parent organizations MGM Television, MGM Holdings, METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIOS INC. | ||
Lightworkers media logo
Lightworkers Media is an American faith and family film and television production company helmed by President Roma Downey and her husband Mark Burnett and owned by MGM Holdings through MGM Television. LightWorkers Media produced the emmy nominated The Bible on the History channel as well as A.D. The Bible Continues on NBC, The Dovekeepers on CBS (based on the novel by Alice Hoffman), Women of the Bible on Lifetime, and Answered Prayers on TLC. They also produced the epic feature film Ben-Hur, Son of God, Little Boy and Woodlawn.
Contents
History
Lightworkers Media was formed by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey with a partial stake held by Hearst Corporation, which owned a stake in Burnett's One Three Media, reality TV series production company. One of its first productions was The Bible TV series for the History Channel in early 2013. On September 22, 2014, MGM acquired a 55% stake in Lightworkers Media and One Three Media and consolidated the two companies into MGM's new TV production unit, United Artists Media Group, with Burnett as CEO. On December 14, 2015, MGM announced that it had acquired the remaining stake in UAMG in a stock and cash deal, and that Burnett would become the new CEO of MGM Television replacing the outgoing president Roma Khanna. With MGM purchasing out of Hearst and Burnett and Downey's share of United Artist, the channel was still a planned streaming service. However, Hearst and Burnett and Downey retained their stakes in the channel. Film and television studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announced the formation of Light TV on November 16, 2016, with a launch planned for December on 13 Fox TV Stations.
The Bible
The series is the first project together from husband and wife producing team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey. In addition to Burnett and Downey, executive producers include Richard Bedser and History's Dirk Hoogstra and Julian P. Hobbs. The first episode of the mini-series was seen by 13.1 million viewers, the largest cable television audience of 2013 to date. The finale delivered 11.7 million total viewers. The Bible shattered sales records in its first week of home video release, selling 525,000 units to become the top-selling TV miniseries of all time. In total, with subsequent airings, 'The Bible' has been seen by more than 95 million viewers.