Roger Corman (born 1926) is a celebrated American film director, producer, and actor. He is leveled as a trailblazer in the realm of independent film through several monikers, including The Pope of Pop Cinema, The King of Cult, and The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood.
Cornman was also the founder of New Concorde, the co-founder of New World Pictures, and a longterm Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences member.
He started his filmmaking journey as a story editor and screenwriter at 20th Century-Fox before establishing his own independent empire. He debuted as a film producer with 1953’s Monster from the Ocean Floor.
Since he was not impressed by the director in his film production, he decided to become a director and began with Five Guns West.
In 1964, he was celebrated as the youngest filmmaker at the Cinémathèque Française, the British Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art, having a retrospective in filmmaking. His long-term engendering of films and filmmaking earned him an Honorary Academy Award in 2009.
Besides, Cornman is also known as the US film distributor for reputed foreign film directors, including Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, and François Truffaut. He acted occasionally in films such as The Godfather Part II, The Silence of the Lambs, Manchurian Candidate, and Philadelphia.
Besides acting, Cornman is credited for writing screenplays that reference films, including Frankenstein Unbound (1990).
Roger Corman Illness & Expiration
The king of B movies, Roger Corman passed away naturally in his old age on May 9, 2024. With his rich experience in filmmaking, the honorary man passed away at the age of 98 at his own home in Santa Monica, California.
The news of Roger Corman’s expiration was confirmed by his family members with the warm statement:
He was generous, open-hearted and kind to all those who knew him. When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that.
Corman had married Julie Halloran, who is also a film producer, in 1970. The couple had raised four children, including Catherine, Brian, Roger, and Mary.
There is not enough information about other family members.
Roger Corman Net Worth
Throughout his career, Roger Corman directed 55 movies and produced 400 movies from 1954 to 2008. Based on his reputation, he has diverse sources of income.
So, Roger Corman was listed as the richest film director, with a net worth of $40 Million. He enjoyed a lavish life with a big house, expensive cars, a foreign trip, and other luxuries.
More importantly, he invested in pushing the rising talents in the filmmaking.
Roger Corman Documentary
Roger Corman, le pape du pop cinéma (English Translation: Roger Corman: The Pope of Pop Cinema) is a French documentary film released in 2021. It is based on the biography of the titular director.
The documentary film was written, produced, and directed by Bertrand Tessier. Its cast includes Allan Arkush, Peter Bogdanovich, Roger Corman, Gene Corman, Julie Corman, and Joe Dante.
It covers the prime days of Roger Corman as a director, revealing anecdotes or realities that giant studios overlook youth’s interests in film.
Corman invested his life to establish the foundation of what is now called “pop culture.” In the documentary, Roger Corman appears and narrates his own real story, with clusters of interviews with the directors and industry fellows he trained and inspired.
It is a fifty-two-minute-long documentary film that
Besides, there are other documentary films based on the life of Corman in the past, including Roger Corman: Hollywood’s Wild Angel (1980) and Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011).