Dana Brunetti

Dana Brunetti (born June 11, 1973) is an American media executive, film producer and entrepreneur.

Brunetti has been nominated for two Academy Awards for producing The Social Network and Captain Phillips and five Emmy Awards for producing the Netflix series House of Cards.

Brunetti grew up in Covington, Virginia, and attended secondary school at Alleghany High School.

As a child, Brunetti delivered morning and evening editions of his local newspaper.

He joined the U.S. Coast Guard in 1992 and served until 1995.

During his enlistment, Brunetti moved to New York.

He met actor Kevin Spacey through a chance introduction from a mutual friend while Brunetti was working at a start up digital wireless network company.

Shortly after meeting each other in 1997, Spacey hired Brunetti as his executive assistant.

Brunetti worked with Spacey through several feature films, such as American Beauty (1999) and The Shipping News (2001).

In 2001, Brunetti transformed Spacey's Trigger Street Productions website, TriggerStreet.com, originally a static homepage for Trigger Street Productions, into a platform for aspiring filmmakers.

The site was a place for users to submit screenplays and short films for feedback from other members.

TriggerStreet.com was relaunched in 2002 as an early social media site, hosting member profiles, providing member ratings of submitted work and interactive forums.

In 2002, Brunetti co-produced the documentaries Uncle Frank and America Rebuilds: A Year At Ground Zero through TriggerStreet.

The controversial unreleased documentary Hackers Wanted was also part of the early film slate of the company.

TriggerStreet steadily gained users resulting in it being named one of the top 50 best websites of 2004 by Time magazine.

In 2004, Spacey promoted Brunetti to President of TriggerStreet productions.

Brunetti's first feature film producing credit was as co-producer for Beyond the Sea (2004).

His first full feature credit was Mini's First Time.

He later produced the film The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang (2006).

He also produced the Emmy-nominated Bernard and Doris.

Brunetti, a Star Wars fan himself, eagerly produced the Star Wars comedy Fanboys.

The film was distributed by The Weinstein Company, and originally slated for release on August 17, 2007.

Brunetti's first major success was for 21 (2008), a film based on Ben Mezrich's New York Times best selling book Bringing Down The House.

Produced on a budget of $35 million, the film went on to a worldwide gross of nearly $158 million.

Brunetti later produced Shrink and Casino Jack.

However, after delays for re-shoots and disagreements over the film's final cut, the release for Fanboys was delayed until February 9, 2009.

Brunetti discussed the film's struggles with the Weinstein Company in interviews on KCRW's The Business podcast and in The New York Times.

In early 2009, Brunetti teamed with Mezrich on an adaption of the book The Accidental Billionaires, which was turned into the critically acclaimed film, The Social Network.

The screenplay adaptation was written by Aaron Sorkin, directed by David Fincher and told the story of Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook.com.

In writing the book on the founding of Facebook, Mezrich was in touch with some of the founding members but not all.

He was having trouble contacting Eduardo Saverin.

To facilitate that meeting, Brunetti had a screening in Boston of the movie based Mezrich's first book and invited Saverin to that screening.

At the party following the screening, the three of them spent time discussing Mezrich's work.

A later screening of the film in Las Vegas resulted in Saverin and his friends meeting with Brunetti and Mezrich again.

Brunetti made sure to have Kevin Spacey attend the premiere and after party as well to ensure that their Facebook-related project would have all the momentum it needed.

The 14-page proposal by Mezrich resulted in a movie being sold to Sony that became The Social Network.

In 2011, The Social Network was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Music (Original Score), Actor in a Leading Role, Cinematography, Directing, Film Editing, Sound Mixing and Writing (Adapted Screenplay).

Brunetti talked about The Social Network on KCRW's The Business podcast.

The site became known as TriggerStreet Labs and expanded to include short story submissions, it closed down in 2015.

Soon after the launch of the new TriggerStreet.com, Brunetti started working as a motion picture producer.