Bill Miller (film producer)

Bill Miller (film producer)
Born 1960
Queensland, Australia
Occupation Film Producer, Lawyer

Bill Miller is an award winning Sydney-based feature film producer.

Life and career

Bill Miller was born in Queensland. With older brother George Miller, he 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.

Along with George and Doug Mitchell, he was a producer on 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 is one of Australia's largest ever animated film projects, with a crew of over 300 film makers. It went on to become a worldwide box office success and 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 has recently completed work on the animated sequel, Happy Feet 2, releasing worldwide in late 2011.

Filmography

Year Title Job
1970 Violence in the Cinema, Part 1 Production Manager
1979 Mad Max Associate Producer
1995 Babe Producer
1998 Babe: Pig in the City Producer
2006 Happy Feet Producer
2011 Happy Feet 2 in 3D Producer

References

  1. http://www.kythera-family.net/index.php?nav=3-10&cid=63-90&did=2722
  2. "Mad Max Movie datasheet". Mad Max Online. Retrieved 11 May 2011.
  3. 3.0 3.1 "Nominees & Winners for the 68th Academy Awards". The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 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. Retrieved 10 May 2011.

External links