Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way Boards Dolphin Documentary 'Freeing Flipper' Ahead of TIFF
Leonardo DiCaprio's production company Appian Way has signed on to executive produce Freeing Flipper, a documentary charting the life of Ric O'Barry — the man who trained the dolphins for the 1960s television series Flipper before spending more than five decades campaigning to free them (Deadline).
Appian Way joins an executive-producing roster that already includes Dogwoof, Copper Island and Bay Rock. Dogwoof, the London-based documentary specialist, will launch international sales of the film at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival market — the industry marketplace that runs alongside TIFF, where sales agents pitch finished films and projects to distributors from around the world (Deadline).
The story at the centre of the film is one of the most striking reversals in wildlife activism. In the 1960s, O'Barry worked for the Miami Seaquarium, where he captured and trained the five dolphins who collectively played Flipper on the popular NBC series (Dolphin Project). His turn came after one of those dolphins died in his arms — a moment he has described as the catalyst for everything that followed. He went on to found the Dolphin Project, an organisation that exposes the hidden world of dolphin captivity, from marine parks to Japan's annual dolphin hunts (Deadline).
O'Barry's work reached its widest audience through The Cove, the Oscar-winning 2009 documentary directed by Louie Psihoyos and produced by Fisher Stevens, which chronicled the covert filming of a mass dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. Stevens returns to the subject in Freeing Flipper, this time on camera as a featured participant, alongside actress and activist Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones), musician Stephen Stills, and Lincoln O'Barry, Ric's son and a fellow campaigner (Deadline).
The film also features one of the final interviews given by Dr. Jane Goodall, the primatologist and conservationist, who died in 2025 (Deadline).
Behind the camera, Barney Douglas directs. His previous credits include McEnroe, a documentary portrait of the tennis champion John McEnroe, and Warriors, about the Afghan cricket team. The underwater cinematography — described as dolphin's-eye sequences — was created by Pete Zuccarini, whose credits include Life of Pi, Avatar and the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Sound design is by Emmy-nominated Dan Weinberg, with a score by Felix White, guitarist for the British band The Maccabees (Deadline).
The British Council's film project database describes Freeing Flipper as the story of the world's highest-paid dolphin trainer risking his life and liberty to free captive dolphins (British Council). With Appian Way now attached and international sales set to open at TIFF, the documentary enters the autumn festival corridor with both star backing and a ready-made audience of buyers deciding what reaches screens in the coming year.
