ABOUT OUR TEAM

Curiosity Entertainment was created to tell stories that impact, inspire, and challenge cultural norms.

Welcome to a production company committed to progress, disruption, and new ideas. At Curiosity we develop & produce high concept stories into commercial film and television. Our fund and sister company Curiosity Media Finance is backed and run by knowledgeable and reputable industry financiers who have been responsible for financing over 11 major motion pictures to date. We are focused on fostering ideas and IP into culture shifting content that entertains, inspires, and creates impact with films, television, and entertainment.

Our film and television team excels in producing films and discovering unique IP that is provocative and redefining. We work with the world’s leading directors/talent and collaborate with some of the most influential figures in film to create genre-defying theatrical releases and TV single dramas & drama series.

CURIOSITY IS OUR SUPER POWER

Founding Partner

Adhrucia apana

Adhrucia Apana, an executive in film and television for the past 8 years, entered the entertainment business after a career in strategy and brand focused on global consumer goods and emerging markets. She grew up in Ohio as a conservatory trained singer, thespian, and dancer. She loves storytelling because a great story cuts across cultural and socio-economic boundaries to inspire and elevate the masses.

Adhrucia develops and produces for Curiosity whose inaugural slate includes collaborations with Mark Williams (OZARK), The Neese Brother's (THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY), Kevin Fox (LAW & ORDER SVU, RAISING KANAN), Rob Weiss (BALLERS, ENTOURAGE) and a co-production with Alcon Entertainment and Nazrin Choudhary (FEAR OF THE WALKING DEAD). Her most recent credits include CAPONE, NEEDLE IN A TIMESTACK, and Emmy Nominee THE SURVIVOR. She is also a GP at Curiosity Media Finance. Adhrucia previously Executive Produced independent films and worked on several major studio slates for BRON Studios financiers of "The Joker" and Oscar Nominated "Bombshell". She was a partner/consultant to American Idol Icon Randy Jackson focusing on TV development and brand integration. She was a partner with Atlantic Screen Media Group and a production associate for The Film House NY.

Adhrucia is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of the acclaimed Carl H. Lindner HONORS-plus scholarship program. She has an International Studies and Marketing Certificate from Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria and a Photojournalism and Film Studies Certificate from University of Auckland, New Zealand.

She is an active member of the diversity initiative "Stone Soup" and Goldhouse which focus on elevating Asian/South Asian voices in the entertainment industry; an annual speaker and mentor for the Winston Baker Entertainment Finance Forum, Indiana University Film Program, and San Francisco State Film Program, and the Indian Film Festival of Cincinnati; and a board member of the Producer’s Guild Social Impact Entertainment (SIE) coalition, and MOVE Network the leading NFT aggregator platform for gaming, film/television, and music. She has served or been an advocate and volunteer for Los Angeles based non-profits Young Storytellers and Project Paper Bag.

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Founding Partner

Santosh Govindaraju

Santosh’s credits include serving as producer and executive producer on comedy, romantic comedy, drama, thriller, and children’s film genres. He is committed to the development of feature films with compelling themes that align with his deeply mystical views on life. He is the head of Curiosity Media Finance (CMF).

He is Chief Executive Officer of Convergent Capital Partners, a real estate private equity firm. Focusing on development and the turnaround of commercial real estate projects, Santosh has applied his creative vision in the investment of over $1 billion of both equity and debt in commercial real estate throughout the United States.

Santosh is a member of the Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, The Committee on Foreign Relations, Leadership Florida and Society of International Business Fellows. He serves on the board of directors of Stage Works Theater, Gasparilla International Film Festival, the Indo-US Chamber of Commerce of Tampa Bay, Chinmaya Mission Tampa Bay, and Arts Conservatory for Teens. Santosh is a founding member of Penn Masala, an all-male Hindi acapella group.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology (M&T), with a Bachelor of Science in Economics with concentrations in Finance and Entrepreneurial Management from the Wharton School, a Bachelor of Applied Science in Systems Engineering from the School of Engineering & Applied Science, and minors in Theater Arts, Mathematics, and South Asian Studies. Santosh also has completed a certificate in the Professional Program in Producing from the School of Theater, Film, and Television at UCLA.

Partner | Head of Development

Leif Lillehaugen

Leif Lillehaugen has over fifteen years of experience in television development and packaging experience with acquisitions of numerous A-List intellectual properties. Leif’s mission for Curiosity is to develop and produce grounded-genre projects for an international audience. This includes a 2021-2022 slate of ground-breaking television projects with A-List creators like Mark Williams (OZARK), Rob Weiss (BALLERS, ENTOURAGE) and Kevin Fox (LAW & ORDER: SVU, RAISING KANAN), as well as many film projects in development.

In his prior roles Leif ran the television side of Endgame Entertainment, a financing and production company, setting up five television shows. As Vice President, Television at Demarest Films, Leif brought in and shepherded the Golden Globe winning AMC/BBC production of THE NIGHT MANAGER. Prior to Demarest Films, Leif ran scripted TV development for four years for Morgan Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment. There he directed the development team that set up eight television shows including CBS’s MADAM SECRETARY, and the Emmy-nominated THROUGH THE WORMHOLE for Discovery Science.

Leif spent two years at Creative Artists Agency where he helped package the films RED with Bruce Willis and the Academy Award winning THE KING’S SPEECH. Prior to CAA, Leif worked in development at Humble Journey Films where he helped set up six television shows at CBS. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota.