Hulu Puts Up a Fight Against Netflix, Amazon and Apple<br />The company has four owners: The Walt Disney Company (30 percent), 21st Century Fox (30 percent), Comcast (30 percent) and Time Warner (10 percent).<br />Any remaining doubts held by Mr. Wright and his collaborators were dispelled after Hulu rolled out “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which had its<br />premiere last April to critical acclaim on its way to taking the awards for best drama series at the Emmys and the Golden Globes.<br />“I got a phone call from the reps,” Mr. Erwich said, “and they were like, ‘Are you aware of this book “The Looming Tower”?<br />Hulu has also built up its catalog by gaining the rights to shows like “30 Rock,” “The Golden Girls”<br />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.<br />Mr. Wright developed the idea with the screenwriter Dan Futterman, who had written the scripts for “Capote”<br />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.”<br />Once they had their pitch honed, they approached HBO, Netflix<br />and Amazon, each of which had proved able to make the kind of ambitious series they were envisioning.
