Bill Miller (film producer)

Last updated

Bill Miller
Born1963 (age 60–61)
Queensland, Australia
Occupation(s) Film producer, lawyer
Years active1970–present
Relatives George Miller (brother)

Bill Miller (born 1963) is a Sydney-based feature film producer.

Contents

Life and career

Bill Miller was born in Queensland and along with his older brother George Miller, attended Sydney Boys High School. [1] Like George, who gave up practicing medicine to become a film director, Bill, a successful arts and entertainment lawyer, gave up the legal profession to pursue a film-making career. He collaborated with George and Byron Kennedy on their early short films, including Violence in the Cinema: Part One, a 14-minute parody of the violent films of the 1970s. This short won two Australian Film Institute Awards, and provided the film-making trio with the confidence to pursue more ambitious projects and Bill acted as associate producer on the original Mad Max , starring Mel Gibson. [2]

Bill shared the honour of being an Academy Award nominee with George and long-time producing partner Doug Mitchell for their work as producers on the family film Babe . [3] In addition to being nominated for Best Picture in 1996, the film earned a total of seven Academy Award nominations, winning the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. [3] It also won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Comedy/Musical) and garnered a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Film. Following the success of Babe, he also went on to serve as a producer on its sequel, Babe: Pig in the City .

With George and Doug Mitchell, he produced the computer-animated film Happy Feet , a musical epic about the life of penguins in Antarctica, featuring the voices of Robin Williams, Elijah Wood, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Anthony La Paglia, Magda Szubanski, Hugo Weaving and Brittany Murphy. Prior to starting production he took part in a six-week expedition to south Antarctica. [4] The Warner Brothers-distributed film was released in late 2006, and went on to become one of Australia's most successful animated film projects. A worldwide box office success, it was nominated for various awards including a Golden Globe, going on to win the Academy Award Oscar for Best Animated Feature [5] and the equivalent British BAFTA award. Miller followed up as producer on the animated sequel, Happy Feet 2, released worldwide in late 2011. He has since been developing projects for film, television and live theatre.

Filmography

YearTitleRole
1970Violence in the Cinema, Part 1Production Manager
1979 Mad Max Associate Producer
1986 Something Wild Associate Producer
1995 Babe Producer
1998 Babe: Pig in the City Producer
2006 Happy Feet Producer
2011 Happy Feet Two Producer

Related Research Articles

The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929. This award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible to submit a nomination and vote on the final ballot. The Best Picture category is traditionally the final award of the night and is widely considered as the most prestigious honor of the ceremony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Academy Award for Best Animated Feature</span> Film category of the Oscars

The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for the best animated film. An animated feature is defined by the academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of the running time. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first awarded in 2002 for films released in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Miller (filmmaker)</span> Australian filmmaker (born 1945)

George Miller is an Australian filmmaker, best known for his Mad Max franchise, whose second installment, Mad Max 2, and fourth, Fury Road, have been hailed two of the greatest action films of all time, Fury Road winning six Academy Awards. Miller is very diverse in genre and style as he also directed the biographical medical drama Lorenzo's Oil, the dark fantasy The Witches of Eastwick, and the Academy Award-winning animated film Happy Feet, produced the family-friendly fantasy adventure Babe and directed the sequel Babe: Pig in the City.

<i>Happy Feet</i> 2006 animated film by George Miller

Happy Feet is a 2006 animated jukebox musical comedy film directed and produced by George Miller and written by Miller, John Collee, Judy Morris, and Warren Coleman. It stars the voices of Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving, Anthony LaPaglia, Magda Szubanski and Steve Irwin. An international co-production between the United States and Australia, the film was produced at Sydney-based visual effects and animation studio Animal Logic for Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, and Kingdom Feature Productions. It is the first animated film produced by Kennedy Miller and Animal Logic. Set in the cold land of Antarctica, the film follows Mumble (Wood), an emperor penguin who is able to tap dance brilliantly despite his lacking the ability to sing the heartsong to attract a soul mate. After being continuously ridiculed and rejected by peers and his own father (Jackman), Mumble departs on a journey to learn what is causing the local fish population to decline--and to find himself along the way.

David Parfitt is an English film producer, actor, and co-founder of Trademark Films. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 71st Academy Awards for Shakespeare in Love (1998).

Judith Ann Morris is an Australian character actress, as well as a film director and screenwriter, well known for the variety of roles she played in 58 different television shows and films, starting her career as a child actress and appearing on screen until 1999, since then she has worked on film writing and directing, most recently for co-writing and co-directing a musical epic about the life of penguins in Antarctica which became Happy Feet, Australia's largest animated film project to date.

Jenny Beavan, OBE is an English costume designer. She has received numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over four decades, including three Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, two Emmy Awards and an Olivier Award.

Kennedy Miller Mitchell is an Australian film, television and video game production house in Potts Point, Sydney, that has been producing television and film since 1978. It is responsible for some of Australia's best-known and most successful films, including the four Mad Max films, the two Babe films, and the two Happy Feet films.

Allen Hall is an American special effects artist who has won two Academy Awards and two BAFTA awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doug Mitchell (film producer)</span> Film producer

Doug Mitchell is a film producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Sixel</span> Australian and South African film editor

Margaret Sixel is an Australian and South African film editor. She is best known for her work as editor on her husband George Miller's films, including Babe: Pig in the City (1998), Happy Feet (2006), and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). For Fury Road, she won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing and the BAFTA Award for Best Editing.

Colin Gibson is an Australian production designer. He is known for his collaborations with George Miller, including Babe, Babe 2: Pig in the City, Happy Feet, Happy Feet Two, and Mad Max: Fury Road, the latter of which resulted in winning the Academy Award for Best Production Design and an AACTA Award. Gibson's other work includes The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, for which he shared a BAFTA award nomination with Owen Paterson.

Damian Martin is an Australian make-up artist specializing in prosthetic and creature makeup. He worked with Jim Henson's Creature Shop on the TV series Farscape and has worked on such films as Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. In 2016, he won an Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling along with Elka Wardega and Lesley Vanderwalt at the 88th Academy Awards for his work on the movie Mad Max: Fury Road. He was also nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Makeup and Hair in the 69th British Academy Film Awards.

Lesley Vanderwalt is a New Zealand cinematic hair designer and makeup artist. Vanderwalt was raised and began her career in New Zealand before moving to Australia, where she has frequently collaborated with directors such as George Miller and Baz Luhrmann. She has worked as a hair or makeup supervisor on TV shows and films including Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Farscape, Moulin Rouge!, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, and The Great Gatsby. In 2016, she won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the 88th Academy Awards and a BAFTA Award for Best Makeup and Hair in the 69th British Academy Film Awards for her work overseeing hair and makeup on the movie Mad Max: Fury Road.

Lisa Thompson is an Australian set decorator and Academy Award winner.

Rosa Tran is an American film producer who specializes in stop-motion animation. In 2016, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in the 88th Academy Awards for producing the film Anomalisa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Hearnshaw</span> Australian filmmaker (1952–2012)

Philip Hearnshaw was an acclaimed Australian filmmaker best known for his work with George Miller and Doug Mitchell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wayne Pashley</span> Australian supervising sound editor, sound designer and re-recording mixer

Wayne Pashley is an Australian supervising sound editor, sound designer and re-recording mixer.

References

  1. ↑ "George Miller". 22 May 2004.
  2. ↑ "Mad Max Movie datasheet". Mad Max Online. Archived from the original on 26 March 2011. Retrieved 11 May 2011.
  3. 1 2 "Nominees & Winners for the 68th Academy Awards". The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on 1 February 2014. Retrieved 10 May 2011.
  4. ↑ "Production Notes : Happy Feet". Robin Williams fansite. Retrieved 10 May 2011.
  5. ↑ "Nominees & Winners for the 79th Academy Awards". The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on 6 August 2011. Retrieved 10 May 2011.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.