Seattle billionaire Paul Allen has been showing some of his diversity in recent weeks, selling abstract art; procuring a rare V-2 rocket; and even announcing plans to cut an album in collaboration with musicians Chrissie Hynde, Joe Walsh, and Anne and Nancy Wilson of Heart.
Now, the renaissance man, who also owns the Portland TrailBlazers and Seattle Seahawks, is putting some of his cash behind another project. Allen’s Vulcan Productions has signed on as a production partner of Pandora’s Promise, a documentary that explores changing opinions in the environmental movement about the importance of nuclear power.
The film, directed by award-winning director Robert Stone, will be released n theaters in June and will air on CNN in November. It is already receiving rave reviews following its debut at Sundance, with The Chicago Tribune calling it the most important film about the environment since Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
“Pandora’s Promise presents nuclear power as a hopeful solution to climate change, and is opening people’s minds about one of the most critical issues of our time,” said Allen. “This is exactly the type of thought-provoking project we are proud to partner on and support.”
A spokeswoman for Allen added that the firm is hopeful that the film will allow people to “take a second look at nuclear power and the possibilities there.”
Allen appears to be in the same camp on nuclear energy as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who last year touted the importance of nuclear energy by saying that coal production killed more people. Gates also is an investor in TerraPower, a Seattle startup that spun out of Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures lab and is developing technologies which would improve upon nuclear technologies created in the 1950s.
Vulcan Productions has bankrolled a number of documentary films over the years, including Girl Rising (2013); This Emotional Life (2010); Judgment Day (2007); and No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005). Here’s a look at the trailer for Pandora’s Promise.
