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Kevin Sullivan - writer, producer, director

Sullivan Entertainment Incorporation

Kevin Sullivan is the President of Sullivan Entertainment Inc. founded in 1979 by him and his partner, Trudy Grant.

Kevin Sullivan

Internationally recognized as one the leading producers of high quality entertainment and renowned for his directorial ease with children and top performers, Sullivan has achieved numerous accolades and awards over the past two decades. His ability to consistently produce top-notch entertainment as well as to attract big name stars has enhanced the image of Sullivan Entertainment throughout the world. The feature film versions of Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel out-grossed many top American movies over their five-year run in Japanese cinemas.

Throughout his more than 20-year career, Kevin has produced over 250 hours of some of the highest-rated programming in Canadian and international television history, including the Emmy Award-winning prime time series Road to Avonlea, Under the Piano starring Amanda Plummer and Megan Follows, Butterbox Babies, and Promise the Moon starring Henry Czerny. In addition to being a two-time Emmy Award winner, Kevin has also won three Cable Ace Awards and four Gemini Awards.

Beyond Green Gables

Interview with Kevin Sullivan (December, 2008)

You can find an e-mail interview with Kevin Sullivan here.

Other notable works

Source: Sullivan Entertainment

Parts from Paul Turko's interview with Kevin Sullivan (February 16, 1996)

A Top-20 program in Canada with a weekly average of nearly 2 million viewers, it's hard to imagine why such a good product as Avonlea would be cancelled. Particularly a product that has garnered three consecutive CableAce awards for best dramatic series, as well as two Emmys and a host of Geminis. But executive producer Kevin Sullivan, who gained international acclaim for his two Anne of Green Gables mini-series in the 1980s, concedes that Avonlea's once-fresh premise had been exhausted.

All the writers and myself had felt that everyone had done their best scripts. Many of the actors had turned in really superlative performances.... To me, Avonlea was always a Sunday night event and I wanted audiences to remember it fondly rather than see it degenerate into something that was a copy of a copy.

So Sullivan shopped for new ideas. Acutely aware of his core audience-women and their families-, Sullivan sought to produce a show that would be markedly different from Avonlea yet maintain its basic philosophy. A literary enthusiast, Sullivan found the perfect material in the writings of Max Braithwaite, whose books Why Shoot the Teacher (1965), Never Sleep Three in a Bed (1969), and The Night We Stole the Mountie's Car (1971) would form a loose framework for Wind at My Back. Based on the author's humourous experiences of 1930s Saskatchewan, the trilogy was exactly what Sullivan had been looking for.

It reinforces the sensibility of what Avonlea is all about: community, family, people going through difficult economic times but simply trying to keep spirits up and prevail against all odds. It's a classic world, a throwback to another era that was moralistic, a little black-and-white.

...

A final question: will the Wind that blew through Durham soar to the prestigious heights of, say, a Green Gables or an Avonlea? Sullivan laughs. I don't know; I'm not the person to ask. One creates television and then one shows it to the masses. We'll just have to see what happens.

Source: http://www.paulturko.com

Pictures of Kevin Sullivan