Daniel Markell serves as senior vice president of development for Big Fish Entertainment, an MGM Company, shepherding the company’s development strategy, pursuing new talent and brand partnerships and managing the company’s development team.

Prior to Big Fish, Markell served as senior vice president of development at Sirens Media, an ITV America company, where he oversaw the label’s entire development slate and supportive team. Joining in 2014, Markell developed such series as the unscripted relationship-focused format The Letter for Freeform, Cheap Eats for Cooking Channel, Twirl Life for TLC, Tesla’s Death Ray: A Murder Declassified for Discovery, and was part of the team which brought acclaimed series Killing Fields to fruition, also on Discovery.

Having developed a wide variety of unscripted series for such networks as A&E, Animal Planet, Food Network, FYI, History, ID and Oxygen, among others, Markell began his career in entertainment as a casting producer on the hit ABC show Wife Swap before segueing to directing and producing shows for cable and broadcast networks such as TLC’s Four Weddings.