Margaret Elizabeth "Megan" Ellison is an American film producer and founder of
Annapurna Pictures, established in 2011. She is best known for producing the
films Zero Dark Thirty, Her and American Hustle, all of which have earned her
Oscar nominations. In 2014, TIME placed her in its list of "100 Most Influential
People in the World" - Pioneers. Early life and education
Megan Ellison was born in Santa Clara County, California, the daughter of
billionaire Oracle Corporation chairman Larry Ellison and his ex-wife, Barbara
Boothe Ellison. She has one brother, film producer David Ellison. Ellison
graduated from Sacred Heart Preparatory in 2004 and attended film school at the
University of Southern California for one year.
Career 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. 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. 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. Around that same time, she began to
collaborate with the Creative Artists Agency's film finance group headed by
Roeg Sutherland and Micah Green. She has since founded Annapurna
Pictures, a company that plans to take a so-called "Silicon Valley" approach to
filmmaking by investing in original, daring movies made by prestigious
directors and screenwriters. Believing that risk-averse Hollywood studios have
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, starring Joaquin Phoenix
and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Zero Dark Thirty, an action-thriller about
the killing of Osama bin Laden from writer Mark Boal and director Kathryn
Bigelow, who made the Oscar-winning movie, The Hurt Locker.
Ellison is developing a film based on "The Boy Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest",
an article about the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by the departing
executive editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller.
In 2011, Ellison outbid Lionsgate for the rights to the Terminator franchise.
In January 2014, Ellison removed Annapurna Productions from the reboot of
the Terminator franchise. In 2014, Ellison became the first woman
and the fourth person to receive two best picture Academy Award nominations
in the same year, which she received for her work on Her and American Hustle. In
June 2014, Ellison optioned the screen rights for the memoir A House in the
Sky, which tells the story of Amanda Lindhout and her capture by Somali
rebels during 2011. Also in 2014, Ellison was included as
part of the Advocate's annual "40 Under 40" list.
Personal life Ellison is openly lesbian. Ellison’s
company is called Annapurna, after the famous Himalayan circuit she hiked in
Nepal in 2006. Ellison has raced speedboats and participated in sailing
races, and was a competitive equestrian as well.
Filmography = As producer=
References External links
Megan Ellison at the Internet Movie Database