Appian Way Productions
Appian Way Productions is a Los Angeles–based film and television production company founded in 2001 by actor and producer Leonardo DiCaprio. Jennifer Davisson serves as President of Production. Since its launch, Appian Way has released a diverse slate of films, including Academy Award–winning films The Aviator (2004) and The Revenant (2015), Academy Award–nominated films The Ides of March (2011) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), as well as the drama The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004), the comedy-drama Gardener of Eden (2007), the biographical crime drama Public Enemies (2009), the psychological horror Orphan (2009), the psychological thriller Shutter Island (2010), the crime dramas Out of the Furnace (2013) and Live by Night (2016), and the biographical drama Richard Jewell (2019). The company has also produced the series Greensburg (2008–2010), Frontiersman,[1] and The Right Stuff (2020) for Disney+.
Company type
2001
Jennifer Davisson (President of Production)[1]
In recent years, Appian Way has been producing documentary films, especially pertaining to progressive environmental change.[2] The company worked in partnership with National Geographic to produce Before the Flood (2016). It also worked with Netflix on the Oscar-nominated Virunga (2014) and Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014). Appian is in partnership with Netflix on several additional documentaries, including How to Change the World (2015), Catching the Sun (2015), and The Ivory Game (2016). Other projects released include The 11th Hour (2007), Sea of Shadows (2019), which won the Audience Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, Ice on Fire (2019) with HBO, and And We Go Green (2019).
History[edit]
2001–2010[edit]
Appian Way Productions was founded by Leonardo DiCaprio in 2001.[3][4] It takes its name from the Roman road of the same name. Its first film was The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004), starring Sean Penn as Samuel Byck, who attempted to assassinate US president Richard Nixon in 1974.[5] It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.[6] The company's next film was the 2004 biopic The Aviator, produced in association with Forward Pass, Intermedia, and Initial Entertainment Group. Based on the 1993 non-fiction book Howard Hughes: The Secret Life by Charles Higham, the film depicted the life of Howard Hughes (DiCaprio), an aviation pioneer who became a successful film producer between the late 1920s and late 1940s while simultaneously growing more unstable due to severe obsessive–compulsive disorder.[7][8] Writing for The Daily Telegraph, Sukhdev Sandhu described the film as "a gorgeous tribute to the Golden Age of Hollywood" even though it "tips the balance of spectacle versus substance in favour of the former". He praised Martin Scorsese's direction, DiCaprio and the supporting cast.[9] The film proved to be a commercial success, with a worldwide gross of $213.7 million against a budget of $110 million.[10] It earned a total of eleven nominations at the 77th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Scorsese) and Best Actor (DiCaprio), and won five of them, including a Best Supporting Actress award for Cate Blanchett.[11]