Keeping Up With The Kardashians indie Bunim/Murray Productions has teamed with Wallander producer Yellow Bird Sweden to launch Yellow Bird U.S. with Headhunters producer Marianne Gray heading up the firm. It follows the launch of scripted label Yellow Bird UK earlier this year.

Based in Bunim/Murray’s LA offices, Gray will work closely with its Chairman and CEO, Gil Goldschein to build the new entity. It has already hired former TNT executive Jonathan Marcus as Director of Development and has set up its first few development projects.

Yellow Bird U.S. has optioned three books: Åsa Schwartz’s The 7 Keys, Lisa Jewell’s I Found You and Mats Strandberg’s The End. It will develop and produce these in English for U.S. broadcasters and streaming platforms.

The 7 Keys follows Rebecka, one of seven IT professionals in the world who has the key to the internet when she wakes up with a gun to her head, I Found You follows two women, a man and twenty years of secrets, and The End, which the company optioned as it launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair, is a pre-apocalyptic YA novel.

Gray will also look to exploit Banijay Group’s existing scripted formats in the U.S.

Read the full article in Deadline Hollywood.