Hulu Puts Up a Fight Against Netflix, Amazon and Apple
The company has four owners: The Walt Disney Company (30 percent), 21st Century Fox (30 percent), Comcast (30 percent) and Time Warner (10 percent).
Any remaining doubts held by Mr. Wright and his collaborators were dispelled after Hulu rolled out “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which had its
premiere last April to critical acclaim on its way to taking the awards for best drama series at the Emmys and the Golden Globes.
“I got a phone call from the reps,” Mr. Erwich said, “and they were like, ‘Are you aware of this book “The Looming Tower”?
Hulu has also built up its catalog by gaining the rights to shows like “30 Rock,” “The Golden Girls”
and “This Is Us.” Its recent purchase of the 15-season library of the NBC medical drama “ER” — which had not appeared on any streaming platform since it went off the air in 2009 — prompted think pieces about the show’s surprising popularity in 2018.
Mr. Wright developed the idea with the screenwriter Dan Futterman, who had written the scripts for “Capote”
and “Foxcatcher,” and the filmmaker Alex Gibney, who had directed a documentary based on Mr. Wright’s 2013 book, “Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief.”
Once they had their pitch honed, they approached HBO, Netflix
and Amazon, each of which had proved able to make the kind of ambitious series they were envisioning.