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.
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] 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, 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.
[17][18] 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 in 2011.
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 Digital Negative to complete Nimona, eventually released by Netflix in 2023.
[26] 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.