Co-Founder & Creative Director
Beach House Pictures
Donovan Chan
Donovan is a founding partner of Beach House Pictures and amongst Asia’s leading film & television producers and showrunners. As Creative Director of BHP, Donovan leads content development and productions, including business strategy with Jocelyn, expanding into key markets like the US, China, Japan, India, and Southeast Asia. They are also spearheading BHP’s expansion into scripted with MR MIDNIGHT for Netflix and several projects in development with Asian, US and European studios. Regular partners and clients include top SVOD players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Warner Bros Discovery and Disney+; and in China, CCTV, Tencent, Bilibili and Youku. In the past 17 years, Donovan oversaw highly rated shows such as Netflix’s Korean true crime series THE RAINCOAT KILLER; Curiosity’s and Amazon Prime’s hit science series EVOLVE; Animal Planet’s fantasy/nat hist series OTTER DYNASTY and Discovery’s flagship survival series ED STAFFORD: FIRST MAN OUT.
Donovan produced 15 ground-breaking 3D documentaries for Discovery, one of which starred Hollywood actor Jason Scott Lee, as well as the blockbuster Nat Geo/Tencent special CHINA FROM ABOVE, which pulled in a record 250 million views in China. Season 2 of ED STAFFORD: FIRST MAN OUT in China broke 40 million views, unprecedented for Bilibili in 2020. The programs under his leadership have won multiple awards internationally and span survival, crime, natural history, science, history, travel, food, lifestyle and engineering.
Before founding BHP, Donovan was a go-to Director and Writer for Lonely Planet TV on shows like LONELY PLANET SIX DEGREES (Discovery) and LONELY PLANET ROADS LESS TRAVELLED (Nat Geo). He co-created and made food & adventure series NOMAD CHEF, starring Jock Zonfrillo (MasterChef Australia) on Discovery Channel. Donovan’s latest projects include MIND YOUR MANNERS for Netflix, OTTER DYNASTY with Animal Planet & Love Nature, ORDER UP! WITH HUDSON YANG for Insight TV and is in development on the Asian action TV series Cleopatra Wong with leading Hollywood studio Ink Factory (The Night Manager, Fighting with my Family). Donovan is a member of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and is a sought-after speaker and judge at international TV conferences and festivals.