Filmmaker Susan Lacy Leaves PBS for HBO

One of the most prolific and honored filmmakers in television is moving from PBS to HBO.

Susan Lacy, the creator and executive producer of “American Masters,” the celebrated public television series that has chronicled the lives and careers of scores of icons of American culture, has signed a multiyear deal to produce and direct documentary films for the pay cable channel.

“It was not an easy decision to make,” Ms. Lacy said in a telephone interview. “But this was a wonderful opportunity for me to continue to make films.”

When she created the “American Masters” show in 1986, Ms. Lacy was not even a filmmaker. She was the executive in charge of the series and hired different documentarians to create the show’s distinctive biographies of talents as disparate as Ella Fitzgerald and Edgar Allan Poe, George Balanchine and James Baldwin.

But after supervising the series for more than a decade, and working in the edit room to produce the final products that won 26 Emmy Awards, Ms. Lacy began making films of her own. Among the subjects she has covered for “American Masters”: Rod Serling, Paul Simon, Judy Garland, Leonard Bernstein and Joni Mitchell.

HBO has asked her to create a biographical series for its award-winning documentary division, headed by Sheila Nevins.

Ms. Lacy said she was extremely proud of her work for PBS, though there is one aspect of the job she will not miss. Financing was often inadequate for “American Masters” projects and Ms. Lacy found herself “having to find money to supplant the funding for each film,” she said.

Money will not be a problem at HBO, she acknowledged. “And I have to admit that was a big draw in taking this job,” she said.

Among the Emmys that “American Masters” has won, the latest of nine for Outstanding Documentary or Non-Fiction series was for “Inventing David Geffen,” a film Ms. Lacy produced and directed.