RIP - Dino De Laurentiis

NOV 11, 2010 - Dino De Laurentiis (pic), producer of some of Italy's best-known films including works by Federico Fellini and Roberto Rossellini, has died in Los Angeles at 91, Italian media reported today.

De Laurentiis, who was born on August 8, 1919 in Torre Annunziata near Naples, also produced several well-known films in the United States including Three Days of the Condor with Robert Redford after he moved there in the 1970s.

He started out in film aged 20 and became one of the leading producers of Italy's post-war cinema boom and the famous neo-realist genre.

De Laurentiis also produced the first 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 2001 he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.