Emmy-winning producer Sam Haskell, III was named in 2007 by Television Week Magazine “One of the 25 Most Innovative and Influential People in Television of the Last 25
Years,” an honor he shared with Ted Turner, Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey, Walter Cronkite and other television legends. Haskell earned his ranking among the industry’s best through his 27-year career at the renowned William Morris Agency where he was one of the most powerful agents and dealmakers in the business.

Since 2012, Sam has run Magnolia Hill Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television in Los Angeles, CA. With his partner Dolly Parton, they initially produced two television movies for NBC. The first, Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors, aired on December 10, 2015 and amassed over 16 million live viewers making it the most viewed original television movie among the Big Four Networks in six years. Moreover, it has received overwhelming critical acclaim and has gone on to win the MovieGuide Templeton Foundation Epiphany Prize, The Christopher Award, and the Academy of Country Music Tex Ritter Award. The second film, Dolly Parton’s Christmas Of Many Colors – Circle of Love, was the highly anticipated sequel to the blockbuster ‘Coat of Many Colors,’ which aired on November 30, 2016 on NBC, again ranking #1 in all key demographics and delivering 14.5 million live viewers. It has also won the MovieGuide Epiphany Prize, the Christopher Award, the Family Film Award, and was nominated for Outstanding Television Movie at the 2017 Primetime Emmy Awards.

Sam has also produced multiple projects for Netflix including Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, an anthology series of eight movies based on the songs and life stories of his dear friend and partner Dolly Parton. Each movie features an all-star cast of award-winning actors including Kathleen Turner, Ginnifer Goodwin, Delta Burke, Gerald McRaney, Bellamy Young, Patricia Wettig, Julianne Hough, Melissa Leo, Timothy Busfield, Mac Davis, Tim Reid, and Camryn Manheim. The Heartstrings episode, ‘These Old Bones,’ won the MovieGuide Faith & Freedom Award for TV, a Christopher Award, and was nominated for Outstanding Television Movie at the 2020 Primetime Emmy Awards. Moreover, the Heartstrings episode, ‘Two Doors Down,’ won Best Individual Episode at the 2020 GLAAD Awards. Heartstrings was also honored by the 2020 PaleyFest as one of the best television series of 2019. In addition, Sam also produced Dolly Parton’s Christmas On The Square, an original Netflix musical movie starring Dolly Parton and Christine Baranski and directed by Debbie Allen, with all new music and lyrics by Dolly. The project aired on Netflix on November 22, 2020, and debuted on Netflix’s Top 10 List for all their programming throughout the entire world.

For his work on ‘Christmas On The Square,’ Sam received the 2021 Emmy Award for Best Television Movie, as well as a 2021 Producers Guild Nomination. The project also won the 2021 Emmy Award for Best Choreography for Debbie Allen, as well as the coveted Christopher Award and MovieGuide’s Grace Award for most inspiring television performance for Dolly Parton.

More recently, Sam produced The Waltons’ Homecoming, which aired on The CW during the 2021 holiday season and was the most-watched program of CW’s 2021-2022 season. A remake of Earl Hamner, Jr.’s 1971 classic The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, which spawned the hit CBS series The Waltons, this all-new television movie starred Bellamy Young (Scandal) as Olivia, Logan Shroyer (This Is Us) as John Boy, Ben Lawson (Firefly Lane) as John Sr. and Richard Thomas, who starred as John Boy Walton in the beloved television series The Waltons, as Adult John Boy/The Narrator. The Waltons’ Homecoming has won multiple awards, including the coveted Christopher Award, MovieGuide’s 2022 Epiphany Prize for

Best TV Program of the Year, the Environmental Media Association Green Seal Award for implementing sustainable practices on set and raising environmental awareness, and the Family Film Award for Best TV Movie. Bellamy Young also won MovieGuide’s Grace Prize for Most Inspiring TV Performance. Following the success of The Waltons’ Homecoming, the CW ordered another movie for the Waltons franchise, A Waltons Thanksgiving, which Sam also produced. It tracks the Walton family as they prepare for the annual Harvest Festival Fair when their lives are dramatically changed after a young boy arrives. The show premiered November 20, 2022, and re-aired in December 2022, with over 1+ million combined viewers and was nominated for MovieGuide’s 2023 Best Television for Families category.

In the fall of 2022, Sam completed his 12th movie with Dolly Parton entitled Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas for NBC. It follows Parton’s desire to uplift an exhausted world’s spirits by sharing the unique “mountain magic” she has always found in and around Dollywood at Christmas. Starring Dolly Parton, Tom Everett Scott (That Thing You Do), Angel Parker (Runaways), Bryan Batt (Mad Men), and Ana Gasteyer (SNL), the movie also features musical guest stars, Miley Cyrus, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Fallon, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Zach Williams. The film, which premiered December 1, 2022 (and re-aired December 22), has accumulated over 20+ million viewers across broadcast and Peacock, making it the most-watched movie telecast on linear TV in 2022, as well as the most-watched telecast on linear TV since November 2019. For her work in the film, Dolly Parton was nominated for Movieguide’s Grace Prize for most inspiring performance, and the film itself won the MovieGuide Epiphany Prize for Most Inspiring Television Show. Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas was nominated for Outstanding Television Movie and Outstanding Contemporary Costumes For A Limited Or Anthology Series or Movie at the 2023 Primetime Emmy Awards. Moreover, the film was nominated by the Hollywood Critics Association for Best Broadcast Network or Cable TV Movie and received an Honorable Mention for the Gracie Award.

This marked Sam’s fourth Emmy Nomination for Best Television Movie, including one win for Christmas On The Square. In total, Sam has garnered six Emmy nominations and two Emmy wins for Magnolia Hill Productions.

Widely known as “the nice guy in Hollywood,” Haskell is revered for his myriad of leadership endeavors throughout his career. He served as President of the Hollywood Radio and Television Society from 1997-1998 and served as Chairman of the Television Academy Emmy Hall of Fame Awards from 2001-2003. In 1997, Haskell was honored with the National Champion for Children Award from the Alliance for Children’s Rights, and from 2007-2008,

Haskell served as a member of the National Board for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 2015, Sam was asked to lay flowers on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC in a special Congressional Ceremony with Miss America 2016 Betty Cantrell. Haskell is also Chairman of the Board for the Mary Kirkpatrick Haskell Scholarship Foundation, which was founded in memory of his mother, and which provides deserving children the opportunity to attend colleges and universities in the state of Mississippi. Through his “Stars Over Mississippi” Benefit Concerts, which are the primary fundraising arm of the Foundation, Haskell has raised over $4,000,000 to help the

Mississippi children who need it most. Sam served ten years as the President of the U.S. Division of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Program in the UK and launched the U.S. program in Los Angeles in the presence of then California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and His Royal Highness the Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh.

Sam is married to his college sweetheart Mary Donnelly Haskell and was an Eagle Scout. Sam and his wife Mary are the only married Ole Miss couple to have both received the University of Mississippi Alumni Hall of Fame Award, and were the only Americans invited to the wedding of HRH The Prince Edward to Miss Sophie Rhys Jones by HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1999. They have two children, Sam IV, and Mary Lane. Sam and Mary also have three grandsons – Samuel Bond Haskell V, James Donnelly Haskell, and William Kirkpatrick Haskell, II.