Earl Owensby Biography

 Earl Owensby is a former Marine and native Carolinian whom GQ magazine nicknamed, "Dixie DeMille". He's been featured (twice) on 60 minutes, with Morley Safer, several times on PM Magazine, CBS News with Dan Rather, Late Night with David Letterman, Good Morning America with Rhonda Barrett, as well as many other publications such as Esquire magazine, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Premiere, Venture, LIFE, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times news, among many others.

Film has always played a major part in EO's life. His fascination began at the age of ten, when he worked as an usher at the Cliffside Theater. He was determined to become a Marine after seeing the Sands of Iwojima. Years later, he spent five years in the Corp. and served in Japan before going on the become known as one of North Carolina's most successful entrepreneurs, founding and establishing a number of successful companies, primarily in the industrial supply business.

1973, EO decided to tackle the entertainment industry when he produced and starred in his first feature film, Challenge. He utilized the profits of that film to begin construction on his own independent film studio near Shelby, North Carolina -- the first of its kind -- and had the satisfaction of watching it grow into the largest independent facility outside of Hollywood.

To date, EO has produced, directed, starred in and/or been associated with the productions of 37 feature films, television and cable network productions and has produced more 3-Dimensional films than any other person in the film business, including Hyperspace, Tales of the Third Dimension, Chain Gang, Rottweiler, Hot Heir, and Hit the Road Running.

In 1986 Earl Owensby Studios expanded its operations by acquiring an uncompleted nuclear power plant site in South Carolina. Many of the buildings on the site were quickly transformed into offices and screening facilities for Florida Straits starring Raul Julia and Fred Ward and filmed for Home Box Office. That production was quickly followed by a television pilot for Universal Television and distributed by ABC, titled Asimov's Probe, starring Parker Stevenson.

In 1988, EO converted a large cement tower intended to house a nuclear reactor into the world's largest underwater film tank holding approximately 7.5 million gallons of water and allowing filming at a depth of 55 feet. The result was an Academy Award for Jim Cameron's underwater thriller, Abyss, starring Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and distributed by 20th Century Fox.

Several other productions filmed at Earl Owensby Studios, Inc. have also won critical acclaim and world recognition, such as the Academy Award nominated Reuben, Reuben starring Tom Conti and Kelly McGillis and The Jonestown Flood produced by the National Park Service which also won an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1989.