Working title

Merchant Ivory Productions is an independent film production company founded in 1961 by producer Ismail Merchant and writer-director James Ivory to produce English language films in India.

Ivory is an American director, screenwriter, and producer from Oregon. Merchant was a film producer from Bombay India. They met in 1959 at a screening of one of Ivory’s documentaries. Their romantic and business partnership lasted until Merchant’s death in 2005. Merchant Ivory Productions holds a Guinness World Record for longest partnership in independent cinema.

Merchant Ivory gained international recognition beginning in 1979 with an adaptation of Henry James’ The Europeans, and widespread acclaim with an adaptation of E.M. Forster’s A room With a View in 1985.

They became known for period pieces in lush settings, elaborate costumes, and prestigious actors, such as Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter, Glenn Close, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Simon Callow, and Vanessa Redgrave.

Novelist and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was also a frequent collaborator, having written or contributed to 23 of their films.

Their film Maurice, an adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel of the same name, is considered a landmark in queer cinema. The novel was originally written in 1914, and revised several times, but not published until after the author’s death in 1970. Maurice tells the story of an Edwardian gentleman’s realization of his own homosexuality and eventual relationships with a schoolmate and later a gamekeeper. Defying the norms and laws of the time when it was written, Maurice features a happy ending for its central gay couple. The hopefulness of the story was particularly welcome when the film was released in 1987, in the midst of the AIDS crisis.

While Maurice was their only distinctly gay-themed film, there was a certain gay sensibility to Merchant-Ivory’s work and source material. They adapted three novels by E.M. Forster – A Room With a View, Maurice, and Howard’s End, and three by Henry James – The Europeans, The Bostonians, and the Golden Bowl. James Ivory also wrote the screenplay for Call Me By Your Name, for which he won an Academy Award for adapted screenplay.