MUMBAI: Tanya Seghatchian, co-producer of the first two Harry Potter films and British film My Summer of Love has been appointed head of the UK Film Council’s Development Fund from 1 April 2007.

Segatchian, a decade old in the industry, has worked with screenwriter Steve Kloves and producer David Heyman of Heyday Films to develop one of the biggest studio film franchises from J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books and with filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski, set up independent production company, Apocalypso Pictures. Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love, won both the Michael Award for Best British Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the Alexander Korda BAFTA for the most Outstanding British Film of the Year.

As a development consultant to Heyday Films, Segatchian brought in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime which she is exec. producing with Steven Kloves as writer-director for Warner Bros. Most recently, she has been exec. producing French filmmaker Francois Ozon’s first English language film Angel which was shown in Competition as the closing night film at the Berlin Film Festival last month and is developing / co-producing Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s novella Deception. Before working in film, Segatchian worked as a script editor on BBC dramas and script-edited The Lakes for Jimmy McGovern.

Segatchian replaces Jenny Borgars who has headed the £4 million Lottery-funded Development Fund since 2000 and steps down from the post at the end of this month. The Development Fund supports single project script development, six slate development companies and a number of script of initiatives.