We have some sad news to share today because it's been confirmed that legendary B-movie filmmaker Roger Corman has passed away at 98.
He produced and directed hundreds of low-budget movies and was responsible for discovering the likes of Jack Nicholson (Little Shop of Horrors), Martin Scorsese (Boxcar Bertha), Francis Ford Coppola (Dementia 13), and Robert De Niro (Boxcar Bertha).
Beloved in Hollywood, Corman was praised for hiring women in key executive and creative roles at a time when that sadly wasn't the norm.
Also of note is the fact that, after producing a movie called The Fast and the Furious in 1955, he made a deal with fellow producer Neal Moritz to exchange the name rights for stock footage, meaning Corman played a small, yet unlikely role, in launching the hit racing/action series in 2001.
Known as "The Pope of Pop Cinema", "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood", and "The King of Cult," Corman's list of credits is massive, though many of you will know him best for helping produce 1994's ill-fated Fantastic Four (which was directed by Oley Sassone).
Made so producer Bernd Eichinger could retain the rights to Marvel's First Family, it was never officially released but has become infamous, with bootleg versions readily available online...if you look hard enough.
In 2015, Corman executive produced a documentary, Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four, which delved into why the movie was made and the cult following it amassed over the past two decades.
"It can't get an official release," Corman said in 2019. "It really started with Bernd Eichinger, a German producer who had the rights to the Fantastic Four. He came to me, I think, in October of one year and said his option on the rights was going to expire if he didn't start shooting by the end of the year, and he had a $30 million budget and he didn't have the $30 million."
"Could I make it for less money? I said, 'How much do you have?' He said, 'I've got a million dollars.' Cutting $29 million out of a $30 million budget is pretty extensive surgery, but we ended up making the film. Part of the deal was, he would have a certain amount of time to see if he could make a deal with a major studio. If he didn't, I would release it, but if he did, he would pay me some additional money."
"He came almost up to the period where I was going to release it, and he made a deal with I think it was Fox, and part of the deal was that he would not release the million-dollar picture because it would interfere with what eventually became a $60 million picture," Corman added. "So simply by contract, that picture cannot be officially released, but there are bootleg copies around."
Addressing his passing in a statement, Corman's family said, "His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic, and captured the spirit of an age. When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, 'I was a filmmaker, just that.'"
Our thoughts go out to his friends and family at this time.