Made Up Stories Australian managing director Jodi Matterson has departed the company after seven years, ending her creative partnership with fellow principals and married couple Bruna Papandrea and Steve Hutensky.
The producing trio has been behind some of the biggest titles across film and television since setting up the venture in 2017, including features, The Dry and its sequel The Dry 2: Force of Nature, Penguin Bloom, and Little Monsters, as well as series’ The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Wolf Like Me, and Strife. She began her producing career more than a decade prior with Darren Ashton’s Thunderstruck, and followed up with titles such as Peter Templeman’s Not Suitable For Children and Abe Forsythe’s Down Under.
In a statement, she paid tribute to Hutensky and Papandrea, while expressing excitement for the road ahead.
“I am so excited to be taking on the challenge to continue to tell bold, entertaining stories with collaborators old and new,” she said.
“Made Up Stories has been such an enormous part of my life, and I am immensely proud of the work that we have made together as a company,” she said.
“Working with Bruna and Steve and the Made Up Stories team over the last seven years has been something truly special.”
Papandrea and Hutensky said they were “so grateful” to have partnered with Matterson on the venture.
“Jodi was integral in establishing Made Up Stories here in Australia as we grew from our beginning in Los Angeles to now operating across the US, Australia and the UK,” they said. We wish her the best in the next chapter of her career.”
While nothing has been confirmed as yet, IF understands that Matterson is in the process of setting up her own production venture.
In an interview with Nine’s Good Weekend magazine published in October last year, she said she wanted to produce “huge studio movies and massive international TV series”.
“I want the biggest audiences I can possibly get . . . My absolute aspiration is to find universal stories that can be set here,” she told the publication.