Rick Senat

Eric (“Rick”) Hartley Senat is a media executive and entrepreneur and film and TV producer. He is Chair of Mad Dog 2020 Casting., Chair of Drylab Media Tech Group and Chair and Founder of The Virtually Group. He is a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Media, Humanities and Technology, University of Lincoln.
==Early Life and Education==
Senat was born in London in December 1949. He was educated at Orley Farm School and Mill Hill School in London. He graduated as Bachelor of Laws (LLB) (Honours) from University College London in 1970. 
==Career==
He joined World Film Services in 1971 where he was Associate Producer on two feature films made in the US and financed by Columbia Pictures; Black Gunn starring Jim Brown and Martin Landau and The Take starring Billy Dee Williams. He subsequently qualified as a solicitor while working at Warner Bros..
In the early 1990s, Senat was instrumental in the setting up of the radio station, Classic FM, after Brian Brolly of the Really Useful Group brought him the idea and Senat showed the project to the President of Time Warner International Broadcasting, Tom McGrath, a former classical musician and conductor. Time Warner agreed to take a significant stake in the project.
After leaving Warner Bros. in 2002, Senat became a media entrepreneur and independent film, TV and theatre producer. He co-produced And Now...Ladies and Gentlemen, directed by Claude Lelouch and starring Jeremy Irons and Patricia Kaas which screened Out of Competition at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. 
His TV credits as an executive producer include The Midwich Cuckoos (Sky), Blithe Spirit (Sky), The Casual Vacancy (BBC/HBO mini-series)
He co-produced Zipp! - 100 musicals in 100 minutes (or less), featuring Gyles Brandreth, which ran at the Duchess Theatre in London from February to July 2003. In 2013, he was co-producer of a play based on Kathrine Kressmann Taylor's classic 1938 novella, “Inconnu à cette adresse”, in French with Christian Clavier and Thierry Lhermitte, and in English as "Address Unknown" starring Simon Kunz and Jonathan Cullen. The play was staged in London at the Soho Theatre and at the Théâtre Raymond Kabbaz in Los Angeles.
Senat was a shareholder in an investment consortium, which also included Charles Saatchi, Lord Mendoza and William Sieghart, which in 2003 acquired Hammer Films, the UK horror film label. In 2007, the consortium sold Hammer to Cyrte Investments, John de Mol’s private equity firm. 
He was Chair of the London Film Museum (incorporating the 007 Bond in Motion exhibition and online store) from 2008 until 2013. He and his business partners, Jonathan Sands and Paul Mendoza, sold their retail and property interests at County Hall, London|County Hall to Merlin Entertainment in 2013. Senat was a shareholder in, and Chair of, the 9¾ Group which owned the various Harry Potter shops at London King’s Cross Station, London and at various London airports as well as the Cursed Child merchandise stores at theatres in London, Melbourne, New York and San Francisco. He and his partners sold the London Film Museum along with their interests in Harry Potter retail and online stores to Warner Bros. in 2018.
He was Vice Chair of the Board of the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark from 1996-2006. He was on the Board of the British Film Institute (BFI) from 1997 to 2003 and Vice Chair of the BFI from 2000-2003. He was a member of the Board of the Soho Theatre from 1997-2004. He was a Non-Executive Director of Bank Leumi (UK) plc from 1999-2014.
He was a Partner at The Blair Partnership, a Literary and Entertainment Agency from 2011-2016. He served as a Non-Executive Director of Cineworld, the major cinema exhibition chain, from 2010-2021
Category:Media executives
Category:Entrepreneurs
Category:Film production
Category:People from London