A video posted to YouTube last month takes an in-depth look at the career of film producer Dino De Laurentiis, including his relatively short but consequential time operating a studio in Wilmington.
There's not really any new information in the 30-minute video, which is titled "The Death of De Laurentiis Entertainment Group." It was posted by a content creator who calls himself Channel Serfer and says he makes "video essays exploring obscure & defunct media."
The video does, however, provide an engrossing look at the circumstances in the 1980s that helped create a film and television industry that exists in Wilmington and North Carolina to this day.
Over footage of the old De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG) studios on 23rd Street in Wilmington — they would later become Screen Gems/EUE Studios and are currently Cinespace Studios — the video notes that while "it was one of the most promising indie studios of its time, the rise and fall of DEG would be sharp and swift."
The video then goes back to De Laurentiis' early life in Italy. Born in 1919, the son of a pasta maker, he rose to acclaim in the 1940s by producing acclaimed films for such well-known directors as Federico Fellini and Roberto Rossellini.
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De Laurentiis would go on to build a major film studio in Rome in the 1960s before selling it in the 1970s to move to the United States.
Unlikely story:40 years ago, Dino De Laurentiis started Wilmington's film industry
After partnering with big American studios to produce such hits as "Serpico," "Death Wish" and, biggest of all, 1976 blockbuster "King Kong" (sprinkled in with flops including "Flash Gordon" and critically acclaimed money-loser "Ragtime"), De Laurentiis found his way to the project that would lead him to Wilmington.
After 1983 movie "The Dead Zone" proved a modest hit, De Laurentiis looked to produce another film based on a Stephen King novel: "Firestarter," now known as the movie that sparked Wilmington's film industry.
The video correctly notes that it was a picture of Brunswick County's Orton Plantation in a magazine that put Wilmington in the minds of De Laurentiis and producer Frank Capra Jr. as a location for "Firestarter." It also curiously claims that it was Wilmington's "landscape, which includes beaches and mountains" that led De Laurentiis to announce the building of a film studio here in 1984, the year "Firestarter" was released. (The video's creator corrects that notion in the comments section, saying "film producers around this time were attracted to North Carolina as a whole due to its varied landscape overall.")
More importantly, the video notes, North Carolina had "right-to-work laws that limited the power of labor unions," leading De Laurentiis to tell media outlets that a film that cost $10 million to make in Los Angeles would cost only $7 million in North Carolina.
De Laurentiis rode into Wilmington on a high but soon ran into trouble thanks to such critical and commercial flops as "Dune" (not filmed in Wilmington), which put financial pressure on the studio. Wilmington-made flops like "Cat's Eye," "Silver Bullet" (both Stephen King projects) and "Year of the Dragon" dug the hole deeper.
Then, as big business conglomerates began buying up film studios, De Laurentiis acquired Embassy Pictures for $35 million in 1985, hoping to acquire a distribution arm for his studios. He then changed his studio's name, previously the De Laurentiis Corporation, to DEG.
The video mentions De Laurentiis' daughter Raffaella as being head of production for DEG, but doesn't mention his wife, Martha, who produced movies alongside her husband.
As the video notes, taking DEG public in 1986 was a huge financial risk, and stumbling out of the gates with flops "Tai Pan" and the Wilmington-filmed sequel "King Kong Lives" didn't help. Even Wilmington-filmed movies like "Blue Velvet" and "Crimes of the Heart" were more critical successes than commercial hits.
De Laurentiis announced plans to build a studio on Australia's Gold Coast in 1986 and to expand his Wilmington studio in 1987, but if '86 was "a brutal year," as the video says, '87 was worse.
DEG lost $70 million for the year as its stock price tumbled from $19 to $2.50 a share. DEG filed for bankruptcy in 1988, and was purchased by Carolco Studio in 1989.
Years later, the always optimistic De Laurentiis blamed DEG's flameout on a combination of bad business advice and his own inexperience dealing with the world of corporate America.
Redemption came later, as the De Laurentiis-produced "Hannibal" sequel to "The Silence of the Lambs" became the biggest hit of his career in 2001. He was honored that same year with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the Oscars before dying in 2010 at the age of 91.
De Laurentiis' time in Wilmington was not all for naught. As the video correctly notes, both Southeastern North Carolina, as well as the Gold Coast of Australia, where De Laurentiis opened another studio in the 1980s, have since become major film production centers.