Industry

 Bestselling authors and Pulitzer Prize finalists Tom Wright and Bradley Hope launch PROJECT BRAZEN, a journalism studio devoted to uncovering thrilling, true stories from around the world via podcasts, books, documentaries, television series and films. Project Brazen will find extraordinary narratives from around the world, with a focus on tales of geopolitical intrigue and malfeasance that have been overlooked by mainstream media sources, and infuse them with a sense of adventure.

Wright and Hope were longtime collaborators at the Wall Street Journal where they wrote groundbreaking front-page stories on some of the biggest events of the day, and uncovered global crime. They led the newspaper’s team that broke open the 1Malaysia Development Bhd. (1MDB) scandal, a $6 billion fraud which brought down a government and forced Goldman Sachs to pay the largest ever penalty under U.S. bribery laws.

They co-wrote the #1 international bestseller Billion Dollar Whale (2018) about Malaysian playboy Jho Low, the fraud’s mastermind, who ensnared banks, Hollywood celebrities and politicians in his schemes. Project Brazen was the codename Wright and Hope gave to a three-year investigation that spanned the globe from Curaçao to Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and Los Angeles. An instant New York Times bestseller, Billion Dollar Whale has gone on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies globally. The book is now being developed into a limited television series by SK Global, the studio behind Crazy Rich Asians.

Over a 20-year career with the Wall Street Journal, Tom Wright reported from across Asia. He was one of the first foreign correspondents to arrive in Abbottabad after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, and his investigations have exposed corporate and government corruption. In 2020, Stanford University honored him with its Shorenstein award for services to journalism in Asia. He’s based in Singapore.

Bradley Hope, based in London, wrote for the Wall Street Journal for seven years from New York City and London. Before that, he spent six years as a correspondent in the Middle East, where he covered the Arab Spring uprisings from Cairo, Tripoli, Tunis and Beirut. Hope is the co-author of Blood and Oil (2020) a rare look inside the secretive royal family of Saudi Arabia and its powerful crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

For their 1MDB reporting, Wright and Hope were Pulitzer Prize finalists, as well as winners of the Gerald Loeb Award for International Reporting and TRACE International Investigative Reporting Award, among others.

“Project Brazen’s stories transport audiences inside hidden worlds. Through our painstaking and challenging reporting process we peel back the cover on international crime, business and politics,” Wright and Hope said in a statement.

Project Brazen has an exciting slate of projects that will be announced soon. They are represented by UTA.
http://www.projectbrazen.com