Nathan Gary is stepping down as the president of Megan Ellison’s Annapurna, a post he has held since 2021, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Gary will also be departing the company.
The co-heads of Annapurna’s indie gaming division, Deborah Mars and Nathan Vella, are also departing.
Hector Sanchez recently rejoined Annapurna from Epic Games and was named the company’s president of interactive and new media. (Sanchez helped launch Annapurna Interactive in 2016.) He will oversee the company’s indie gaming efforts as Annapurna is also looking to expand into AAA, or large-budget, games.
Under Ellison and her senior leadership, the company will integrate its in-house gaming operations with the rest of Annapurna’s divisions, which include film, TV and theater.
Gary was elevated to president following his time as chief of interactive, co-founding the company’s gaming division. In the past couple of years, Annapurna has ascended in the indie gaming space, producing award-winning indie games like What Remains of Edith Finch and Stray, the latter of which sold multimillion units in its first month of release and won the gaming world equivalent of an Oscar in 2022.
Annapurna, which faced well-reported financial difficulties in 2019 and 2020, will soon debut Marielle Heller’s anticipated horror comedy Nightbitch, starring Amy Adams, at the Toronto International Film Festival. Annapurna recently released Netflix’s Nimona, the Oscar-nominated animated feature, and the animated TV series Sausage Party: Foodtopia with Amazon. In theater, the company was behind the Sarah Paulson’s Tony winning play Appropriate and the upcoming West End staging of play Dear England about football manager Gareth Southgate.
Source: Hollywoodreporter
