Sue Naegle is an American television executive and producer, former President of HBO Entertainment, former Chief Content Officer at Annapurna Pictures, and founder of Dinner Party Productions. In 2012, Naegle was recognized as the 46th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes Magazine . [1]
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Naegle grew up in Rockaway, New Jersey and attended Morris Hills High School. [2] She studied comparative literature and communications at Indiana University, where she graduated in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts. [3]
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Naegle began her career in 1992 in the mail room at United Talent Agency. Two years later, she became an agent at the company, and went on to be named a partner and co-head of the TV department in 1999. At 28 years old, Naegle was one of the youngest partners at a major agency. During her tenure, she was credited with developing several successful programs, including The Bernie Mac Show and the HBO dramas Six Feet Under and True Blood.
In 2008, she was named President of HBO Entertainment, overseeing the production of all original series. At HBO, she was instrumental in shepherding such Emmy Award-winning shows as Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, True Blood, Treme, Eastbound & Down, Enlightened, Veep and Girls [4] . In August 2012, she was recognized as the 46th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes Magazine, and in the last year of her tenure, HBO won 27 Emmy Awards [5] . After her departure from the company in 2013, she formed her own television and film production company, Naegle Ink.
In 2016, she was named the head of Annapurna Television, a division of Annapurna Pictures [6] . In 2019, she was named Chief Content Officer of Annapurna Pictures, where she oversaw TV, film, and theatre development [7] . She was instrumental in launching Annapurna’s Theater and Television departments, fostering a supportive environment for artists and amplifying distinctive voices across both spaces. During her tenure at the company, Naegle executive produced the ten-time Emmy-nominated Hulu series Pam & Tommy, starring Sebastian Stan and Lily James; the two-time Emmy-nominated Max series The Staircase, starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette; Showtime’s I Love That For You, created by and starring Vanessa Bayer; HBO’s The Plot Against America, Amazon’s Dead Ringers, starring Rachel Weisz; and Apple TV+’s The Changeling, starring LaKeith Stanfield. Naegle also produced the Coen Brother’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs for Netflix in 2018.
After starting Annapurna’s Theater division, she oversaw the production of several Tony Award- winning shows including Network, starring Bryan Cranston; The Lehmann Trilogy; David Byrne’s American Utopia, directed by Spike Lee; and A Strange Loop. In March 2022, Naegle departed from the company.
On the film side, Naegle produced Laura Steinel’s feature directorial debut, Family, starring Taylor Schilling and Brian Tyree Henry, which premiered at the 2018 SXSW festival. She subsequently produced the adaptation of Susan Scarf Merrell’s Shirley, with Josephine Decker directing, and starring Elisabeth Moss. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, with Decker winning the Special Jury Award for Auteur Filmmaking.
Naegle was an Executive Producer on Maria Schrader’s She Said with Plan B for Universal and Cory Finley’s Landscape of the Invisible Hand for MGM/Amazon.
She is producing the upcoming adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s novel Nightbitch for Searchlight, with Mari Heller directing, and Amy Adams starring.
In April of 2024, it was announced that Naegle had signed a multiple-year overall deal with Universal Content Productions, forming Dinner Party Productions alongside producing partner Ali Krug. The company will develop and produce new projects for UCP [8] [9] .
Dinner Party Productions is producing Peacock’s adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s New York Times best-selling novel The Five-Star Weekend, with Bekkah Brunstetter writing. The company will also Executive Produce the series adaption of New York Times bestselling author Lucy Foley’s The Midnight Feast in collaboration with Universal International Studios after the studio landed the rights in a competitive bidding war.
Naegle is a board member of Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, a pediatric cancer charity that raises funding for early childhood cancer research and provides resources and support for impacted families.
She also sits on the board of Film Independent, an entertainment non-profit that works to help filmmakers realize their projects, and strives to increase inclusivity and amplify diverse voices within the film industry [10] .
Naegle has four children and is married to writer Sarah Gubbins.
Working Title Films Limited is a British film studio that produces motion pictures and television programs and is a subsidiary of Universal Pictures, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a division of Comcast. The company was founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1983. Bevan and Eric Fellner are now the co-chairmen of the company.
Morgan Creek Entertainment, LLC is an American film production company, former sales agent and investor, that has released box-office hits including Young Guns, Dead Ringers, Major League, True Romance, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Crush, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and The Last of the Mohicans. The studio was co-founded in 1987 by James G. Robinson and Joe Roth. Robinson leads the company as chairman and CEO. His two sons, Brian Robinson and David C. Robinson, run the day-to-day operations. The company name comes from Roth's favorite film, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Their most recent film is The Exorcist: Believer, which was released on October 6, 2023.
Bad Robot is an American film and television production company founded on May 27, 1999 and led by Katie McGrath and J.J. Abrams as Co-CEO. Under its Bad Robot Productions division, the company is responsible for the television series Alias, Lost, Fringe, Person of Interest, Revolution, and Westworld alongside the feature-length films Cloverfield, Star Trek, Super 8, Star Trek Into Darkness, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Star Wars Episodes VII and IX, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Star Trek Beyond, The Cloverfield Paradox, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and Overlord.
Legendary Entertainment, LLC is an American mass media and film production company based in Burbank, California, founded by Thomas Tull. The company has often collaborated with the major studios, including Warner Bros. Pictures, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures and Paramount Pictures, as well as streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. Since 2016, Legendary has been a subsidiary of the Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group and American equity firm Apollo.
Zoe Swicord Kazan is an American actress and writer. She made her acting debut in the film Swordswallowers and Thin Men (2003) and later acted in films such as The Savages (2007), Revolutionary Road (2008), and It's Complicated (2009). She starred in Happythankyoumoreplease (2010), Meek's Cutoff (2010), Ruby Sparks (2012), What If (2013), The Big Sick (2017), The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), and She Said (2022). She also wrote Ruby Sparks and co-wrote Wildlife (2018) with her partner Paul Dano.
Universal Content Productions LLC (UCP) is an American television production company operating within the Universal Studio Group division of NBCUniversal, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast.
Kaitlyn Rochelle Dever is an American actress. She became known for her roles in series such as Justified (2011–2015), Last Man Standing (2011–2021), Unbelievable (2019), and Dopesick (2021). She earned Golden Globe Award nominations for Unbelievable and Dopesick, in addition to a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Dopesick.
Margaret Elizabeth Ellison is an American film producer, entrepreneur, and daughter of multibillionaire Larry Ellison. She is the founder of Annapurna Pictures, established in 2011. She produced the films Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Her (2013), American Hustle (2013), and Phantom Thread (2017), all of which have earned her Oscar nominations. In 2014, Ellison was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. She also received a Tony Award for Best Musical as a producer for the musical A Strange Loop.
Annapurna Pictures is an American independent media company founded by Megan Ellison on April 2, 2011 and based in Los Angeles, California. It is active in film, television and theatrical production, film distribution, and video game publishing.
Nathan Ross is an American film and television producer.
Sam Esmail is an American film and television producer, director, and screenwriter who runs the production company Esmail Corp. He is best known as the creator, writer, and director of the award-winning USA Network television series Mr. Robot (2015–2019), starring Rami Malek. He wrote and directed the feature films Comet (2014) and Leave the World Behind (2023). He produced and directed the first season of the acclaimed Amazon Prime Video psychological thriller Homecoming (2018–2020), starring Julia Roberts and Janelle Monáe, and produced USA's Briarpatch (2020), Starz's Gaslit (2022), and Peacock's Angelyne (2022) and The Resort (2022).
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is a 2015 memoir by Carrie Brownstein, a member of the band Sleater-Kinney. Named for one of her lyrics, the book is about her life in and around music. The book starts with her as a hyper-performative young nerd who runs for vice president of her Washington State elementary school. The story goes on to cover Brownstein's escape from a turbulent family life into a world where music was the means toward self-invention, community, and rescue. Along the way, Brownstein chronicles the excitement and contradictions within the era's flourishing and fiercely independent music subculture, including experiences that sowed the seeds for the observational satire of the popular television series Portlandia years later.
Caila Marsai Martin is an American actress and producer, best known for her role as Diane Johnson on the ABC sitcom Black-ish (2014–2022).
Monkeypaw Productions is an American independent film and television production company founded in 2012 by Jordan Peele. The company is known for producing horror films, such as Get Out, Us, Candyman, Nope, and Wendell & Wild, as well as other films, such as Keanu and Monkey Man.
Bonnie Sue Fishman, known professionally as Bonnie Bruckheimer, is an American film and television producer. She has also been known professionally as Bonnie Fishman, Bonnie Martell, and Bonnie Bruckheimer-Martell. She has been nominated for 2 Emmy Awards. In 1985, she and Bette Midler formed their own production company, All Girl Productions, and were producing partners until 2002.
Aaron Saidman is an American creator-developer, documentary filmmaker and television producer known for creating or serving as an executive producer on a number of non-fiction television series and documentary feature films, including Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, Curse of Von Dutch,Mind Field,Declassified: Untold Stories of American Spies, The Pitch,The Seven Five,Free Meek and Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer. Saidman is the President and co-founder of The Intellectual Property Corporation, which he created in 2016 with longtime producing partner Eli Holzman.
Sunday Night Productions is an American film and television production company founded by John Krasinski and Allyson Seeger in 2013. It has produced the television series Lip Sync Battle, Dream Corp LLC, and Jack Ryan, the YouTube streaming news show Some Good News (2020), and the films Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009), Promised Land (2012), The Hollars (2016), and A Quiet Place Part II (2020).
Hoorae Media, also known as Hoorae, is an American independent media production company formed in September 2020 by Issa Rae. Formerly known as Issa Rae Productions, Hoorae launched as an umbrella banner to consolidate her various film, television, and digital content companies. Insecure, A Black Lady Sketch Show, and Rap Sh!t, were produced by Hoorae with HBO. Upcoming productions include the television adaptation of the novel The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, and the film Sinkhole, produced with Monkeypaw Productions and Universal Pictures.
Amy Aniobi is a Nigerian-American writer and producer. She was the head writer and co-executive producer of Insecure and was also an executive producer for the HBO special 2 Dope Queens. Aniobi signed a two-year overall deal with HBO in 2019.
Nightbitch is an upcoming American comedy horror film written and directed by Marielle Heller, based on the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder. It stars Amy Adams in the lead role, alongside Scoot McNairy, Arleigh Patrick Snowden, Emmett James Snowden, Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, Ella Thomas, Archana Rajan, and Jessica Harper in supporting roles.