American film producer and director, Davis Guggenheim, has an estimated net worth of $8 million. He's best known for his 2006 documentary and An Inconvenient Truth, featuring the former United States Vice President Al Gore. Since 2006, he is the only filmmaker to have released three documentaries which are considered as among the top 100 highest-grossing documentaries of all time. These documentaries were titled It Might Get Loud, Waiting for 'Superman' and An Inconvenient Truth. 

Philip Davis Guggenheim was born on November 3, 1963, in St. Louis, Missouri in the United States. His parents are Marion and Charles Guggenheim. His father was a Jewish film director and producer and Davis graduated from the Potomac School in 1979, Sidwell Friends School in 1982, and later, Brown University in 1986.

He has been married to Elisabeth Shue since 1994, and the couple has three children. The family lives in Los Angeles in a $1.65 million home. Before moving to this residence, they lived in the Sunset Strip area in a 1926 Spanish-style home, which they sold for $1.3 million.

In 2006 he was the executive producer of An Inconvenient Truth - a documentary about global warming which won the Academy Award in 2007 for Best Documentary Feature. The film grossed $24 million in the United States and $26 million internationally, making it the 11th highest-grossing documentary in United States history. The film has been credited for raising awareness of global warming internationally, been included on the science curriculum in many countries, and has spawned a sequel: An Inconvenient Sequal: Truth to Power (2007) which Davis Guggenheim also executive produced.

In 2008, Guggenheim directed a biographical film for Barack Obama, which aired during the Democratic National Convention while Obama was a presidential candidate. The same year, he also directed an infomercial for Obama, and in 2012 released a 17-minute short film on the president, entitled The Road We've Traveled. He also assisted in making films for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and a series of short films for Joe Biden's 2020 campaign.

He has produced many critically-acclaimed documentaries, including It Might Get Loud, about the lives of guitarists Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White. The film premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in August 2009 and made a worldwide gross income of $1,807,506. Another documentary focusing on rock musicians followed in 2011, again premiering at that year's Toronto International Film Festival. From the Sky Down documents the band U2 as they produced their 1992 album Achtung Baby and the band commissioned Guggenheim to make the film to celebrate the record's 20th anniversary. From the Sky Down was nominated for the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video.

Davis Guggenheim often covers social issues in his documentaries. 2010's Waiting for "Superman" is about the failures of American public education and received the Audience Award for best documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The Dream is Now is about undocumented young students in the United States, dealing this the immigration system. He's also made documentaries about famous figures including Malala Yousafzai (in 2015's He Named Me Malala) and Bill Gates (Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates - a miniseries exploring the life of the tech billionaire).

Sources: Wikipedia, IMDB, Jewish Virtual Library, SF Gate, Variety, Nicki Swift

This article was updated on April 8, 2021 by Poppy O'Neill

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