Brow Beat

TV Is So Good Right Now That Annapurna Pictures Is Starting a TV Division

Sue Naegle, who will head Annapurna’s new TV division, speaking in 2013.

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Since its founding in 2011, Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures has made a name for itself with a steady stream of excellent and interesting films. Ellison, the daughter of Oracle’s Larry Ellison, has the deep pockets to fund things like Paul Thomas Anderson’s 65 mm cinematography in The Master and the taste to know that giving directors like Anderson, Spike Jonze and Ana Lily Amirpour room to run would pay off artistically. (The trailer for Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women, an Annapurna production that looks typically ambitious and interesting, was released just today.) Now Ellison moving into television, according to Variety, bringing former HBO president of entertainment Sue Naegle aboard to head the new division.

Naegle, who started in United Talent Agency’s mailroom and rose to partner there before moving to HBO, was instrumental in the launch of Game of Thrones, Veep, and Girls. She will bring some projects she’d been developing at her own production company, Naegle Ink, with her. She’ll also take over at least one Annapurna TV project already in development, a series about classic Hollywood focusing on Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich from writers Angela Robinson and Alex Kondrake. It remains to be seen whether Annapurna can adapt its model of smart, director-driven content to the world of serial storytelling (or virtual reality, another Annapurna project), but it can certainly afford to try. Given Ellison’s track record so far, it’d be foolish to bet against her.