Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures moves into television

By Emily St. James | April 17, 2014 | 2:00pm

Aux Features TV

Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures, the production company and film financier behind many of the best films of the past several years (including three Best Picture nominees), is making the move into television, according to a press release. The company’s first television project will be set in the Golden Age of Hollywood and focus on the intersection of lives between Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, which sounds like sort of a limited idea for a TV show but what do we know? (Also, it sounds like something that will cause Ryan Murphy to throw things angrily once he learns he won’t be producing it.) The project hails from writers Angela Robinson and Alex Kondracke, both of whom have worked on plenty of previous cable shows, usually with some sort of super sexy bent, which suggests where this one might be headed. (Honestly, we don’t know. Maybe it will be about Garbo and Dietrich solving crimes. Ryan Murphy’s head just exploded in rage.)

The project doesn’t have a network attached to it yet, nor has it cast any of its roles. But it’s exciting to see so many film production companies getting into the television game as the latter market expands into more and more niches. (In recent weeks, Sony has announced it will be producing exclusive content for Playstation, while Yahoo has also announced it’s getting into the scripted TV game.) The most likely deal here would be for something like what The Weinstein Company has been doing, lining up promising projects, then finding network and streaming production partners to make them a reality. (Its upcoming Marco Polo, for instance, will be on Netflix.) As such, we recommend to Annapurna that it bring Greta Garbo And Marlene Dietrich IN Hart To Hart: The Golden Years to AMC, which at one time stood for American Movie Classics and now stands for Story Matters Here Sometimes.