BBC Films contends it will be 'business as usual' despite the news earlier this week that BBC Head of Fiction Jane Tranter will leave the UK to join BBC Worldwide in Los Angeles next January.

Joe Oppenheimer, Executive Producer BBC Films, said day-to-day operations at BBC Films wouldn't be impacted by Tranter's move.

Tranter's widely predicted move to the US comes almost exactly a year after she announced a new structure for BBC Films following the departure of David Thompson, the Beeb's long-serving Head of Films last autumn. Tranter had presided over the recent move of BBC Films from its independent offices back into BBC Television Centre in West London.

'One of the sad things about her departure is that it always takes a while to adjust to things and we felt we were just at the beginning of working together. We had established a way of doing that and she moved on,' Oppenheimer said.

He added that there wasn't a 'revolutionary shift in ideas' over what BBC films was going to do under Tranter's stewardship. 'The kind of films that BBC Films invests in is going to remain more or less the same,' he noted.

High-profile current projects from BBC Films include Martin Campbell's Edge Of Darkness and Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road. Meanwhile, Debbie Isitt's Nativity has just finished shooting in Coventry, Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank is in post-production and James Honeyborne's The Meerkats, BBC Films' first natural history doc, is screening in Dinard next month.

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