Move over Harvey Weinstein, there's a new movie mogul in town and she boasts deeper pockets than the Oscar-laden king of independent film will ever have.
Megan Ellison, the 26-year-old daughter of the software billionaire Larry Ellison, is being hailed as the saviour of cinema after distributing her largesse over a series of films whose artistic ambitions far outweigh their box-office potential.
As the Wall Street money tap dries up for risky indie cinema, directors are hustling for an audience with Ellison, the film-school dropout who has shot to the top of Hollywood's producers-to-watch list by asking open-mouthed supplicants: "How much do you need?"
When Paul Thomas Anderson set out his vision for The Master, the director's allegory for the birth of Scientology, Ellison said, "I'll pay for it all", and wrote a cheque for US$40 million ($48.6 million).
Ellison's Annapurna Productions backed Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, a dramatisation of the Navy Seal hunt for Osama bin Laden, offering US$45 million. Ellison has financed four films at a total cost of US$100 million this year.
