Agostino De Laurentiis (8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010), usually credited as Dino De Laurentiis, was an Italian film producer. Since his first movie, L'ultimo Combattimento, (1940) he produced nearly 150.
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 a busy center of 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), 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 legendary King Kong (1976) remake, which was a commercial hit; Lipstick; 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 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.
In 2001 he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In 1949 De Laurentiis married actress Silvana Mangano, with whom he had four children: Veronica, Raffaella, who is also a film producer, Federico, who died in a plane crash in 1981, and Francesca. Silvana and he were married until her death in 1989. In 1990 he married movie producer Martha Schumacher, with whom he had two daughters, Carolyna and Dina. One of his grandchildren 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 in his own right.
(sources: Wikipedia, Variety)
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