Bruna Papandrea is the award-winning Founder and CEO of Made Up Stories, a development and production company formed in January 2017 with offices in Los Angeles and Sydney.
Made Up Stories is committed to amplifying distinctive voices to tell unforgettable stories about the diversity of human experience, driven primarily by multifaceted females on and off-screen. Through Made Up Stories, Papandrea recently produced the film adaptation of the inspiring international bestseller, Penguin Bloom, starring Naomi Watts, Andrew Lincoln and Jacki Weaver, which premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival and is releasing on Netflix in early 2021, and The Dry, based on the Jane Harper novel, from director Robert Connolly and starring Eric Bana which has broken records at the Australian box office upon release in January 2021. Previously, she
Bruna Papandrea is the award-winning Founder and CEO of Made Up Stories, a development and production company formed in January 2017 with offices in Los Angeles and Sydney.
Made Up Stories is committed to amplifying distinctive voices to tell unforgettable stories about the diversity of human experience, driven primarily by multifaceted females on and off-screen. Through Made Up Stories, Papandrea recently produced the film adaptation of the inspiring international bestseller, Penguin Bloom, starring Naomi Watts, Andrew Lincoln and Jacki Weaver, which premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival and is releasing on Netflix in early 2021, and The Dry, based on the Jane Harper novel, from director Robert Connolly and starring Eric Bana which has broken records at the Australian box office upon release in January 2021. Previously, she produced celebrated filmmaker Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale, which made its world premiere at the 2018 Venice Film Festival where it won two awards before it was released theatrically by IFC Films and won six AACTA Awards including Best Film in 2019, and rising filmmaker Abe Forsythe’s Little Monsters, starring Lupita Nyong’o and Josh Gad, which made its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was distributed by Neon and Hulu.
On the television side, Made Up Stories produced the HBO series The Undoing starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, directed by Susanne Bier and created by David E. Kelley, which recently completed its debut season with record-breaking ratings, and the upcoming Amazon Original series Tell Me Your Secrets created by Harriet Warner and directed by John Polson, starring Lily Rabe, Amy Brenneman, Hamish Linklater and Enrique Murciano. Additional upcoming projects in various stages of production include Nine Perfect Strangers, based on best-selling author Liane Moriarty’s book, written by David E. Kelley and John Henry Butterworth, and starring Nicole Kidman and Melissa McCarthy for Hulu; the Netflix thriller series Pieces of Her, adapted from renowned crime author Karin Slaughter’s eponymous book, starring Toni Colette and Bella Heathcote; and Anatomy of a Scandal, a suspenseful six-part anthology series based on the international bestseller by Sarah Vaugh that S.J. Clarkson will direct for Netflix.
Prior to Made Up Stories, Papandrea executive produced the HBO hit series Big Little Lies starring Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley and Laura Dern. The series was adapted by David E. Kelly from the bestselling novel by Liane Moriarty, directed by Vallee, and won an astounding five Golden Globes and eight Emmys, including Best Limited Series for Papandrea and her fellow executive producers. She returned to her executive producer role on the series’ second season, which added multiple Academy Award-winner Meryl Streep to its ensemble cast, and recently was nominated for five Emmy Awards.
Additionally, Papandrea launched and partnered with Witherspoon in the production banner Pacific Standard. Pacific Standard acquired and produced films from the bestselling books Wild by Cheryl Strayed, starring Witherspoon and directed by Jean Marc Vallee and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, starring Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck and directed by David Fincher. Wild garnered two Oscar nominations and Gone Girl made over $369 million worldwide.
Papandrea also produced the Summit Entertainment box office hit Warm Bodies through her company Make Movies. She was president of Michael London’s Groundswell Productions and served as a producer at Anthony Minghella’s and Sydney Pollack’s Mirage Enterprises for many years. Bruna’s producing credits also include Andrew Jarecki’s All Good Things, Noam Murro’s Smart People and Jonathan Teplitzky’s Better Than Sex. She also executive produced the highly acclaimed Milk from Gus Van Sant.
Papandrea is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the Television Academy, and the Producer’s Guild of America, where she serves on the board of directors and the producer’s counsel. She is also an ambassador for Reframe, the joint Hollywood initiative between Women In Film and the Sundance Institute to further gender parity in the media industry. In April 2020, Papandrea co-created the “It Takes Our Village” industry initiative to raise funds to support the film and tv crews behind the camera who were unemployed due to COVID-19, the majority of whom are below-the-line workers with no contractual safeguards. In just one month, “It Takes Our Village” raised almost $1 million for those hit hardest by Hollywood’s shut down.
Papandrea splits her time between Los Angeles and Sydney with her husband and 8 year-old twins.
