Producer of the Oscar®-nominated short, THE CREATION OF WOMAN (1961) who began his longterm association with director James Ivory the same year. Merchant's financial and marketing expertise as a producer greatly contributed to the team's success and enhanced their international profile. The duo's initial film together, THE HOUSEHOLDER (1963), was the first film made in India to be distributed worldwide by a major American company, in this case Columbia Pictures.
As their partnership developed, the duo moved away from Indian subjects and developed a reputation for intelligent, tasteful adaptations of modern literary classics, especially those of E.M. Forster and Henry James. Merchant also directed two films for TV, the short "Mahatma and the Mad Boy" and the full-length "The Courtesans of Bombay" for Britain's Channel Four. Following the commercial and critical enthusiasm for Merchant-Ivory heritage films A ROOM WITH A VIEW (1985) and HOWARDS END (1992), the team produced the immaculate historic reconstruction THE REMAINS OF THE DAY (1993), which reunited HOWARDS END actors Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins in an impeccably acted study of unexpressed love between an emotionally repressed butler and his admiring head housekeeper. While the film was, like its predecessor, nominated for Oscars across the board, some critics felt it to be a pretty but staid simplification of Anglo-Asian writer Kazuo Ishiguro's novel of the same title.
Other notable (non-nominated) Merchant credits as producer include SHAKESPEARE-WALLAH (1965), THE GURU (1969), BOMBAY TALKIE (1970), SAVAGES (1972), THE WILD PARTY (1975), THE EUROPEANS (1979), THE BOSTONIANS (1984), MAURICE (1987), MR. & MRS. BRIDGE (1990), THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE (1991), JEFFERSON IN PARIS (1995), SURVIVING PICASSO (1996), A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES (1998), THE GOLDEN BOWL (2000), LE DIVORCE (2003), HEIGHTS (2004) and THE WHITE COUNTESS (2005).
Nominated for Short Subjects (Live Action Subjects) 1960: THE CREATION OF WOMAN - Producer (w. Charles F. Schwep)
Nominated for Best Picture of the Year 1986: A ROOM WITH A VIEW - Producer at Merchant-Ivory
Nominated for Best Picture of the Year 1992: HOWARDS END - Producer at Merchant-Ivory
Nominated for Best Picture of the Year 1993: THE REMAINS OF THE DAY - Producer at Merchant-Ivory (w. John Calley & Mike Nichols)
4 nominations