Dino De Laurentiis

Agostino De Laurentiis, usually credited as Dino De Laurentiis (8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010), was an Italian Academy Award-winning movie producer.

Early life 
He was born at Torre Annunziata in the province of Naples. He grew up selling spaghetti produced by his father. He studied at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. His studies were interrupted by the Second World War.

Career 
His first movie was L'ultimo Combattimento in 1940. He has produced nearly 150 movies. In 1946 his company, the Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, moved into movie production. In the early years, De Laurentiis produced neorealist films such as Bitter Rice (1946) and the Fellini classics La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1956). Neorealist is a style about the poor and working class. In the 1960s, De Laurentiis built his own studio facilities. During this period, De Laurentiis produced such films as Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, Navajo Joe (1966), and Barbarella (1968).

In the 1970s, De Laurentiis moved to the US. He created his own studio, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG), based in Wilmington, North Carolina. During this period De Laurentiis made a number of successful and acclaimed movies, including Serpico (1973), Death Wish (1974), Mandingo (1975), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Shootist (1976), Ingmar Bergman's The Serpent's Egg (1977), Ragtime (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Blue Velvet (1986).  

It is for his more infamous productions that De Laurentiis's name has become known: The King Kong (1976) remake, which was a commercial hit, Lipstick, the killer whale movie 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 movie); David Lynch's Dune (1984); 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. 

De Laurentiis also produced the first Hannibal Lecter movie Manhunter (1986), Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002), a remake of Manhunter. He also produced Hannibal Rising (2007).

Awards 
In 2001 he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Death 
Laurentiis died on 10 November 2010 at his residence in Beverly Hills, California.

Personal life 
He had four children with his first wife, actress Silvana Mangano, who died in 1989. He later married movie producer Martha Schumacher with whom he had two daughters. One of the children from his first marriage, Raffaella De Laurentiis, is also a producer; another, Federico De Laurentiis (28 February 1955 – 15 July 1981), died at 26 in an airplane crash. His granddaughter is Giada De Laurentiis, host of Everyday Italian, Behind the Bash, Giada at Home and Giada's Weekend Getaways on Food Network. His nephew is Aurelio De Laurentiis, a film producer and the chairman of SSC Napoli football club.

Filmography 
Selected filmography from 1965 to the present.

References

Other websites

Dino De Laurentiis Company  Official site

Academy Award winners
Italian movie actors
Italian movie producers
People from Campania
1919 births
2010 deaths