Former Binge Content Chief Alison Hurbert-Burns Launches Australian Production Label The Set Up With Made Up Stories

Alison Hurbert-Burns, the executive who launched Australian streamer Binge and greenlit some of its most talked-about series, is starting over — this time on the production side. She has partnered with Bruna Papandrea and Steve Hutensky's Made Up Stories to launch The Set Up, a Sydney-based production company that will package premium Australian drama series and sell them to broadcasters and streamers at home and abroad. Deadline reported the launch on 19 August 2026.

Hurbert-Burns will serve as CEO. Papandrea and Hutensky, the duo behind Made Up Stories, are co-founders. Three Made Up Stories executives — Casey Haver, Jeanne Snow and Katie Amos — will round out the leadership team. The label will focus purely on Australian titles, while Made Up Stories continues building its slate of TV and film projects in the U.S. and internationally.

The plan is straightforward: take Australian stories, attach the intellectual property, talent and financing, and bring fully packaged series to market. That means a buyer — whether a traditional broadcaster or a streaming platform — gets a project ready to go, rather than one still searching for its pieces.

The partnership reunites people who have already worked together. When Hurbert-Burns led content at Binge, Papandrea produced two titles for the platform: Strife, a record-setting drama, and The Last Anniversary, adapted from the novel by Liane Moriarty. That working relationship now becomes a formal business.

Hurbert-Burns knows the Australian television landscape from both sides of the commissioning desk. She launched Foxtel's subscription video-on-demand service Binge — think of it as Australia's equivalent of a streaming tier built for younger, entertainment-focused viewers — and oversaw its original slate. The shows she ordered include Colin From Accounts, the rom-com that became a word-of-mouth hit, Mix Tape and The Twelve. In total, she commissioned 25 original series across six years as Executive Director for Commissioning and Content at Foxtel, which is owned by sports streaming group DAZN. She exited that role in 2025.

Earlier in her career, she worked in content acquisitions for Nine Network and its streaming platforms, 9Now and Stan — giving her a view of how programmes are bought as well as how they are made.

Made Up Stories brings its own track record to the table. The company produced HBO's Big Little Lies and The Undoing, Hulu's Nine Perfect Strangers, and The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart for Prime Video Australia, along with Peacock's The Good Daughter. Its film credits include The Dry, The Dry 2 and Addition.

For Australian writers, crews and audiences, The Set Up adds a new buyer and builder of local drama at a moment when the global streaming market keeps hunting for stories from outside Hollywood. The label's remit is narrow by design — Australian titles only — but its sales ambition is global.