Dougray Scott & Buccaneer Media’s Buccaneer Scotland Hires Creative Director As It Seeks To Match Scale Of ‘Outlander’ — Mipcom Cannes

EXCLUSIVE: Crime star Dougray Scott and Buccaneer Media, the Scottish police drama’s producer, have hired a Creative Director for Buccaneer Scotland, as it seeks to supercharge the scale of its productions in the Celtic country.

The Lighthouse development chief Neil Duncan hired to run Buccaneer Scotland slate as Creative Director, focusing on showcasing Scottish literary, acting and behind the camera talent through its worldwide operations and partnerships.

Scott and Buccaneer teamed to launch Buccaneer Scotland in November 2021, with Mission Impossible 2 star Scott taking an equity stake in the business. He had moved back in Scotland after a long period living in the U.S. to film Crime and will be joint CEO of Buccaneer Scotland alongside Buccaneer Media bosses Richard Tulk-Hart and Tony Wood.

Wood, the veteran drama producer and co-creator of The Only Way is Essex, noted big budget U.S. productions such as Starz’s Outlander had greatly improved the skills base for high-end dramas in Scotland, and said this gave Duncan and Buccaneer Scotland a great footing to further the legacy.

“American productions have come in and trained up exceptional crews, but you need to spread them more widely across the landscape there and for us it’s an opportunity to build on what Outlander has achieved,” he said. 

Buccaneer Scotland boss Duncan joins from The Lighthouse, which is producing upcoming Netflix feature Scoop. We first told you about that project, which is a dramatisation of the car-crash Prince Andrew interview on the BBC back in July 2022. Duncan has held his Head of Development role at the company since 2020. Before that, he was held a similar role at BBC Studios Drama London.

Duncan began his career at the BBC as a script