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Val Lewton was born Volodymyr Leventon in Yalta, Imperial Russia (now Ukraine) in 1904. Five years later, his famous aunt, Hollywood movie star Alla Nazimova, arranged for the family to move to the United States. When Val Lewton was 21, Nazimova then helped her nephew establish himself in Tinseltown. Lewton started as an assistant to David O Selznick, which meant he got to work on classic pictures like "Rebecca", "A Star is Born" and, not least, the cinematic leviathan "Gone with the Wind". Talk about getting a promising start in show business.

In 1942, RKO Pictures had almost gone bankrupt after the financial failure of Orson Welles' box office bomb, "The Magnificent Ambersons". In an attempt to save the ailing studio, RKO offered Lewton a job in their production unit. His task was to create a series of low-budget horror films that would make some much-needed cash. Lewton "just" had to follow three simple rules: each picture had to come in under a $150,000 budget, each film was to run under 75 minutes and RKO's management was going to supply the movie titles prior to the start of production.

The title RKO first obtained the rights to was "Cat People". The studio now expected a movie to be developed on that theme. So, after researching various horror films, Lewton began to write a script. He then assembled a team he had worked with before. "Cat People" was to be shot at the RKO studio lot, re-using sets from previous movies. Ironically, "The Magnificent Ambersons" was one of them.

"Cat People" had its world premiere at the Rialto Theatre in Manhattan in December 1942. The reviews ranged from negative to mildly encouraging. But it didn't matter what the critics thought - audiences loved the film right from the start. So, despite being made as a typical B-movie, it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1993. A prestigious recognition of the picture's cultural and historical significance.

On a cold winter day in 1958, Charles Starkweather knocked on the door of his 14-year-old girlfriend's house. However, it was her parents who answered. When they asked Starkweather to stay away from their daughter, he pulled out a gun and killed them. He then forced his fiancée into a stolen car and fled. That marked the beginning of a long, murderous journey through the American heartland. When the police finally managed to stop Charles Starkweather, he had shot to death a total of 11 people. For this, he was sent to the electric chair in Nebraska's State Penitentiary in Lincoln.

Terrence Malick had just started his second semester at the American Film Institute when he heard about Charles Starkweather. The young man's killing spree across Wyoming and Nebraska left a profound impression on Malick. So much so that he decided to write and produce a movie based on Starkweather's story. However, Terrence Malick chose to handle the grim subject relatively loosely. After all, the director intended to make a feature film - not some kind of documentary.

But "Badlands" was not an easy movie to make. When principal photography began in July 1972, Terrence Malick had to cope with a meagre budget of just $300,000. Of that sum, the director contributed $25,000 of his own, personal funds. The rest were raised by friends and professionals such as doctors and dentists. Several members of the crew then quit during the production. Others were injured when an explosion occurred as they were shooting a crucial fire scene.

In 1973, "Badlands" was chosen as the closing picture at the annual New York Film Festival. That must have been a particularly proud moment for Terrence Malick, as the other entrants that year also included acclaimed movies such as Francois Truffaut's "Day for Night" and Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets." Shortly thereafter, Warner Brothers purchased the film's distribution rights for just under $1 million. Today, "Badlands" is considered to be something of a modern classic.

The animation unit at Walt Disney Studios underwent something of a renaissance with the release of "The Little Mermaid" in 1989. The movie was a classic fairy tale, set to a Broadway-style musical score. After several lean years for the company, the film became a worldwide smash hit. So, on a late-night flight between London and New York, Jeffrey Katzenberg, chair of production at Disney, discussed a sequel with some of his executives. One of the suggestions was to make a kind of "Bambi in Africa", with lions. However, it was considered a high-risk project. From "Snow White" on, all Disney hits have started as classicals and featured humans. This was an original story with talking animals.

In October 1991, several of the company's technical team travelled to the Hell's Gate National Park in Kenya. The idea was to study wild animals and the African environment for the upcoming movie. But after having worked for six months developing the story, the group got a nasty surprise. Instead of a documentary-like picture as initially planned, Jeffrey Katzenberg had now decided that "The Lion King" should be a fully-fledged musical instead.

More than 600 animators worked on "The Lion King". Together, they generated thousands of hand-painted backgrounds and over a million drawings. Back in 1991, "Beauty and the Beast" became the first Disney production to use the so-called Computer Animation Production System. This time, the method was used to create the amazing wildebeest stampede sequence. All the animals were "built" in the computer and then replicated hundreds of times for the finished film.

Even though critical reaction was muted, "The Lion King" drew record-breaking crowds. The film also became one of the best-selling home videos of all time, with millions of copies sold. But, sadly, "The Lion King" turned out to be the last Walt Disney production to be supervised by Jeffrey Katzenberg. Only weeks after the movie's premiere, he left the company to create DreamWorks Animation instead.