![](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2021\/09\/21\/business\/21bruna-5\/merlin_124908053_8e4e4902-df23-4e95-bccf-846493aca205-articleLarge.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFreedom, Maine, population 722, is about as far away from Hollywood as you can get. So when Erin French, who runs the uber-popular Lost Kitchen there, had boldface names flocking to her virtual doorstep looking to buy the film rights to her best-selling memoir, she approached them with a lot of trepidation and a bit of awe.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was intense,\u201d Ms. French said of the experience of selling her personal story of food, addiction and abuse, told in the 2021 book \u201cFinding Freedom: A Cook\u2019s Story; Remaking a Life From Scratch.\u201d \u201cHere you are, sitting in the middle of nowhere, a girl who felt like she had grown up a nobody, and then all of a sudden you\u2019re having Zoom calls with Blake Lively. It was definitely a wild time.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to Ms. Lively, Ms. French and her husband, Michael Dutton, met with others like MGM and Ron Howard\u2019s Imagine Entertainment. In the end, Ms. French and Mr. Dutton sold the rights to Bruna Papandrea and her four-year-old company, Made Up Stories. The couple said they were won over by Ms. Papandrea\u2019s passion for the project, her clear vision of how to turn it into a movie and her track record for finding the right talent for projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re heading into what\u2019s referred to as \u2018Shark Territory,\u2019 getting into this whole world of Hollywood-ness,\u201d said Ms. French, \u201cand we felt like Bruna\u2019s a fighter and Bruna was going to always protect us and keep pushing forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
For decades, Ms. Papandrea, 50, toiled in the entertainment business shadows of more famous collaborators, most notably Reese Witherspoon. Together, they produced hit adaptations like \u201cWild,\u201d \u201cBig Little Lies\u201d and \u201cGone Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Made Up Stories, though, Ms. Papandrea has stepped firmly into the spotlight. Her latest series, \u201cNine Perfect Strangers,\u201d which stars Nicole Kidman and Melissa McCarthy and concludes Wednesday, is Hulu\u2019s most-watched original series, according to the streaming service, beating the audience numbers for acclaimed shows like \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u201d and \u201cThe Act.\u201d Like \u201cBig Little Lies,\u201d it was adapted from a book by Liane Moriarty.<\/p>\n
The show\u2019s success, according to those involved, is proof of Ms. Papandrea\u2019s tenacity. \u201cShe\u2019s hard to say no to,\u201d said Craig Erwich, president of Hulu Originals and ABC Entertainment<\/p>\n
Shut down in Los Angeles by the pandemic, Ms. Papandrea and her team quickly shifted the entire production to Byron Bay in New South Wales, Australia. Ms. Papandrea persuaded the brand-new Soma meditation retreat to open its doors to the production before opening to the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, listen, I made a show called \u2018Big Little Lies,\u2019 I\u2019m telling you it just makes your property more, it brings it a lot of attention,\u201d she said with her clipped Australian accent.<\/p>\n
Sitting outside at a beach cafe in Santa Monica, Calif., last month, Ms. Papandrea spoke with a machine gun cadence, dropping words at the ends of sentences as she toggled between topics. It\u2019s a pace mirroring the frenetic schedule she\u2019s managing as she prepares some seven productions for five streaming platforms \u2014 all movies or television shows centered on complicated female protagonists.<\/p>\n
In the next year alone she will debut one movie and two television shows for Netflix, including the long-gestating adaptation of the best-selling novel \u201cLuckiest Girl Alive\u201d; a series for Spectrum Originals and BET on women\u2019s college basketball; an anthology series for Apple TV+ titled \u201cRoar\u201d; an Amazon original series starring Sigourney Weaver; and a romantic comedy series for Peacock that stars Josh Gad and Isla Fisher.<\/p>\n
It is a sign of how Ms. Papandrea, known for her penchant for finishing novels in one sitting, is uniquely suited for a moment in the entertainment industry when the number of major companies able to buy content is shrinking but the need for compelling shows that will draw audiences continues to grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m watching it all curiously because it doesn\u2019t matter what network you run or what streaming platform you head, you have to have curators, you have to have people who have taste,\u201d she said. \u201cThe hardest thing in the world is to find something someone wants to make, and that\u2019s my skill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Papandrea teamed with Ms. Witherspoon for three years, shepherding projects like \u201cGone Girl\u201d and \u201cBig Little Lies\u201d to the screen and racking up accolades along the way, including best actress Oscar nominations for both Ms. Witherspoon (\u201cWild\u201d) and Rosamund Pike (\u201cGone Girl\u201d). The two went their separate ways in 2017. Ms. Witherspoon formed Hello Sunshine, which was just sold to a new company backed by the investment firm Blackstone Group for $900 million.<\/p>\n
Ms. Papandrea took the company\u2019s two former employees and with her husband, Steve Hutensky, started Made Up Stories. The company now has 12 employees and offices in Australia and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
She attributes the split to the two women wanting different things and having \u201cslightly different tastes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, she built a big company and I built a big company,\u201d she said with a chuckle.<\/p>\n
Ms. Witherspoon declined to comment for this article.<\/p>\n
To finance her new operation, Ms. Papandrea sold a passive minority stake in her business to Endeavor Content, the production arm of the talent agency WME. The companies also formed a joint venture \u2014 renewable every calendar year \u2014 that allows both to serve as co-studios on all Made Up Stories television projects and some Made Up Stories films. The two share the economic risk of their entire TV development slate, but Endeavor does not pay for Ms. Papandrea\u2019s overhead costs. She and Mr. Hutensky maintain independence over all creative decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just love being independent. I love it,\u201d she said. \u201cThis path has given us the freedom and resources to compete in the marketplace for top material and writers, to bet on up-and-coming creators, to find the right path for each project and to choose the best homes for distribution among the many platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Made Up Stories is one of many companies with a partnership with Endeavor Content.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are platform agnostic, so we can sell her shows and our shows and other people\u2019s shows to any platform,\u201d said Graham Taylor, a co-president of Endeavor Content. \u201cWe\u2019ve kind of built a United Artists 100 years later that we supply shows to every outlet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The job of a producer has never been easily defined. There are those who take on the title simply because they contributed some money along the way. Others, like Ms. Papandrea, work tirelessly from book option all the way to postproduction and marketing to ensure that the promises they made at the beginning of what is an often long and tortuous process will still be met at the end.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a problem. Producing credits are passed out like lollipops,\u201d said David E. Kelley, the prolific writer and producer, who has worked with Ms. Papandrea on five projects including \u201cNine Perfect Strangers.\u201d \u201cWhat we just did in \u2018Nine Perfect,\u2019 for example, that\u2019s kind of a miracle. Bruna had to blaze so much trail with the government just to get people into the country in order to shoot. It\u2019s hard work, and it\u2019s a lot of work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Papandrea, the third of four children, was raised by a single mother in a housing commission flat in the working-class neighborhood of Elizabeth, South Australia. She dropped out of college twice: once after starting a commerce law degree at Melbourne University and later bailing on an arts degree at Adelaide University.<\/p>\n
She tried her hand at acting. That didn\u2019t stick.<\/p>\n
She then got a job working as the assistant to the Australian cinematographer Dion Beebe, an opportunity that led her first to being a producer of commercials and then films. Her big break, she said, came when she started working for the directors Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack.<\/p>\n
The job took her to London and then to Los Angeles, where she learned the art of adaptation from two of the best in the business.<\/p>\n
According to Ms. Papandrea, Mr. Minghella hired her because she was smart and she made him laugh. He taught her how to treat creative people with respect and to never work with anyone she didn\u2019t want to have a meal with.<\/p>\n
She held on to those early lessons and has vowed to pay it forward by hiring only young talent with no Hollywood connections.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we hire people now, we make sure they\u2019ve had no access to the business. We won\u2019t hire someone off a desk,\u201d she said. \u201cWe try and find people who have come up with no experience, because how else do you break those people in?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jessica Knoll was one such author. Ms. Papandrea worked with her to turn her novel \u201cLuckiest Girl Alive\u201d into a feature film. The two first came together seven years ago, just after \u201cWild\u201d was made. But executive shuffles, changing tastes and other challenges kept the film in development for years. All the while, Ms. Papandrea stuck with Ms. Knoll as the film\u2019s only writer \u2014 a feat in modern-day Hollywood.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was just so fierce in terms of how much she championed writers and how much she protected them and their stories,\u201d said Ms. Knoll, who had never written a screenplay before adapting her own and recalls Ms. Papandrea giving her Mr. Minghella\u2019s memoir \u201cMinghella on Minghella\u201d and coaching her through the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be in business with her forever. The room is a brighter room when Bruna Papandrea is in it.\u201d<\/p>\n