DINO DE LAURENTIIS Biography - Producers, publishers & editors

 
 

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DINO DE LAURENTIIS

Name: Agostino De Laurentiis                                                           
Born: 8 August 1919 Torre Annunziata, Campania, Italy                                 
                                                                                       
Agostino De Laurentiis, usually credited as Dino De Laurentiis, (born August 8,       
1919) is an Academy Award-winning Italian movie producer born at Torre                 
Annunziata in the province of Naples.                                                 
                                                                                       
He grew up selling spaghetti produced by his father. A study at the Centro             
Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome was interrupted by the Second World War.       
                                                                                       
Since his first movie, L'ultimo Combattimento, (1940) he has produced nearly 150       
movies to date. In the early years De Laurentiis produced neoclassical art films       
as Bitter Rice (1946) and the Fellini classics La Strada (1954) Nights of             
Cabiria (1956), often in collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti. In the 1960s,       
Dino De Laurentiis built his own studio facilities, although these financially         
collapsed during the 1970s. During this time though, De Laurentiis produced such       
films as Barbarella (1968) and Danger: Diabolik (1968), both successful comic         
book adaptations, and The Valachi Papers (1972).                                       
                                                                                       
In the 1970s, De Laurentiis relocated to the USA where he set up studios,             
eventually creating his own studio De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG) based       
in Wilmington, North Carolina; the building of the studio quickly made                 
Wilmington one of the busiest centers of American film and television production.     
During this period De Laurentiis made a number of successful and acclaimed films,     
including The Scientific Cardplayer (1972), Serpico (1973), Death Wish (1974),         
Mandingo (1975), Three Days of the Condor (1975), Ingmar Bergman's The Serpent's       
Egg (1977), Ragtime (1981), and Conan the Barbarian (1982). It is for his more         
infamous productions that De Laurentiis's name has become known - the legendary       
King Kong (1976) remake, which was a commercial hit, as well the killer whale         
film Orca (1977); The White Buffalo (1977); the disaster movie Hurricane (1979);       
the remake of Flash Gordon (1980); Halloween II (the 1981 sequel to John               
Carpenter's 1978 classic horror film); David Lynch's Dune (1984) and Blue Velvet       
(1986); and King Kong Lives (1986). De Laurentiis also made several adaptations       
of Stephen King's works during this time, including The Dead Zone (1983), Cat's       
Eye (1985), Silver Bullet (1985) and Maximum Overdrive (1986); Army of Darkness       
(1992) was produced jointly by De Laurentiis, Robert Tapert and the movie's star       
Bruce Campbell.                                                                       
                                                                                       
During this time De Laurentiis also produced the original Hannibal Lecter film         
Manhunter (1986). He passed on adapting Thomas Harris's sequel, The Silence of         
the Lambs, but produced the two follow-ups, Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002),     
a remake of Manhunter. He also produced Hannibal Rising (2007), which tells the       
story of how Hannibal becomes a serial killer.                                         
                                                                                       
In his later choice of stories he displayed a strong preference for adaptations       
of successful books, especially sweeping classics like the Bible (1966),               
Barabbas (1961), or Dune (1984).                                                       
                                                                                       
In 2001 he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of         
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.