Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
Megan Ellison
American film producer from California From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
Margaret "Megan" Elizabeth Ellison (born January 31, 1986)[1] is an American film producer, entrepreneur, and daughter of multibillionaire Larry Ellison. She is a founder of Annapurna Pictures, established in 2011. She produced the films Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Her (2013), American Hustle (2013), and Phantom Thread (2017), all of which have earned her Oscar nominations. In 2014, Ellison was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.[2] She also received a Tony Award for Best Musical as a producer for the musical A Strange Loop.[3]
Remove ads
Early life and education
Megan Ellison was born in Santa Clara County, California, the daughter of Oracle Corporation co-founder and chairman, multibillionaire Larry Ellison, and his ex-wife, Barbara Boothe Ellison. Her father is of Jewish and Italian descent.[4] She has a brother, film producer David Ellison, who founded Skydance Media.[5] Ellison graduated from Sacred Heart Preparatory in 2004[6] and attended film school at the University of Southern California for one year.[7]
Remove ads
Career
Summarize
Perspective
Initial film work
Ellison was given her first film credit in 2005 as a boom operator for the short film When All Else Fails, a thriller written and directed by her brother David Ellison. Ellison then began to finance low-budget movies such as Waking Madison and Passion Play. The success of the Coen Brothers' True Grit in 2010, on which she was listed as an executive producer, brought her attention and credibility and launched her career as a producer.
Transition to production
Ellison started out in the film business in 2006 when she contacted Katherine Brooks, the writer and director of Loving Annabelle, about investing in the filmmaker's next movie. The duo made plans for Waking Madison, starring Elisabeth Shue, which told the story of a woman who tries to cure her multiple personality disorder by locking herself in a room without food for 30 days. Ellison financed the film that was reported to have a budget of $2 million. Principal photography took place in 2007. It screened at the Newport Beach Film Festival in 2011 and went straight to DVD in July of that year.[8]
Ellison provided some financing for more movies in 2008 and 2009. The first was Main Street starring Colin Firth. It received little attention at film festivals and failed to gain general release. Passion Play, also made in 2009, got a release but fared poorly at the box office despite a well-known cast of popular actors. However, her investment in the Coen brothers western remake True Grit paid off as that movie found major commercial and critical success when released at the end of 2010.[8]
After that, Ellison received access to much larger sums of money from her father for the production of more movies and partnered with Michael Benaroya to produce and cofinance the thriller Catch .44 starring Bruce Willis and Forest Whitaker, and John Hillcoat's Prohibition-era crime drama, Lawless.[8]
Founding and expansion of Annapurna
In 2011, she founded Annapurna Pictures to invest in original, daring movies made by visionary directors and screenwriters. Believing that risk-averse Hollywood studios had largely abandoned sophisticated dramas, period pieces, and auteur cinema, Annapurna Productions has released Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, a period drama about a cult that resembles Scientology, Zero Dark Thirty, an action-thriller about the killing of Osama bin Laden from writer Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow,[8] Spike Jonze's Her, and David O. Russell's American Hustle.[9] It was named for the Annapurna Circuit she hiked in Nepal in 2006.[10] Annapurna is backed by Ellison's billionaire father.[11]
In 2011 and 2012, it was reported that Ellison was working with Boal on developing a movie about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange based on a New York Times Magazine article called "The Boy Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" by former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller.[12] Amid fierce competition in 2012 among movie studios to produce an Assange biopic,[13] Ellison and Annapurna eventually did not produce the movie, but DreamWorks released The Fifth Estate in 2013.[14]
In 2011, Ellison outbid Lionsgate for the rights to the Terminator franchise.[15] Ellison would then make a deal with her brother David Ellison so his Skydance Productions produced Terminator Genisys, where Megan only had an executive producer credit.[16]
In 2014, Ellison became the first woman and the fourth person to receive two Academy Award nominations for Best Picture in the same year, which she received for her work on Her and American Hustle.[17][18]
Also in 2014, Ellison was included as part of The Advocate's annual "40 Under 40" list.[19] In 2018, Ellison won the Woman in Motion Award at Cannes Music Festival.[20]
After a series of underperforming productions, in 2019 Ellison had grown secluded from Hollywood, leaving Annapurna to be mostly run by Nathan Gary, who led Annapurna Interactive before being promoted to president. She left to Lanai, a Hawaiian island owned by her father, and remained there as the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to remain isolated. In early 2021, her former chief of distribution Erik Lomis approached Ellison regarding purchasing Nimona, a project about to be cancelled with the closure of its production company Blue Sky Studios. She liked the footage and the film's LGBT elements, and agreed to acquire the project, establishing an Annapurna Animation division and hiring studio DNEG Animation to complete Nimona, eventually released by Netflix in 2023.[21]
In October 2024, Ellison was announced as an executive producer on the film I Love Boosters and the television series Who Is Maud Dixon?.[22][23]
Remove ads
Personal life
Ellison is openly lesbian.[24] She owns a number of motorcycles.[25] Additionally, she is a competitive equestrian, having trained at the Wild Turkey Farm in Woodside, California and riding in the North American Young Rider Championships in 2004.[26]
Filmography
Summarize
Perspective
 | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. (May 2019) |
Producer
Executive producer
Remove ads
Accolades
She has received four Academy Award for Best Picture nominations as a producer for the films American Hustle, Her, Phantom Thread and Zero Dark Thirty.[31] As of a producer of American Hustle, Ellison won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. She also has five Golden Globe nominations for the films Foxcatcher, Her, Joy, Zero Dark Thirty and 20th Century Women.[31] The Producers Guild of America nominated American Hustle, Foxcatcher, Her and Zero Dark Thirty for Best Theatrical Motion Picture.[31]
In 2012 and 2013, Ellison was nominated for subsequent BAFTA Award for Best Film and AACTA Award for Best Film recognizing Zero Dark Thirty and American Hustle respectively.[30] She received a Gotham Award for Best Feature nomination for The Master.[29]
Remove ads
References
External links
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads