Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, Lisa Marie, and Bill Murray are among the supporting cast.

Years later, irritated at being thought of solely as writers for family films with their work on Problem Child (1990) and its 1991 sequel, Alexander and Karaszewski struck a deal with Burton and Denise Di Novi to produce Ed Wood.

Initially, Michael Lehmann was chosen to direct the project, but due to scheduling conflicts with his work on the film Airheads (1994), he had to vacate the director's position which was taken over by Tim Burton.

Ed Wood was originally in development at Columbia Pictures, but the studio put the film in "turnaround" over Burton's decision to shoot in black-and-white.

At the same time, Ed shows the film's completed script to his girlfriend, Dolores Fuller, and soon reveals that he is secretly a transvestite, having worn women's clothing for personal comfort since childhood.

The movie is released to critical and commercial failure, preventing Ed from getting work at Weiss' Screen Classics or making a partnership with Warner Bros. executive Feldman (who at first believes the film to be a practical joke played on him by William Wellman).

Ed and company (along with TV horror icon Vampira) later attend the premiere of Bride of the Monster, where an angry mob chases them out of the theater.

After learning that his landlord's church is struggling to produce a series of religious films about the twelve apostles, Ed convinces him to allow his church to fund his script for a sci-fi film, Grave Robbers from Outer Space, which could result in a box-office success and generate enough money for the landlord's dream project.

Ed hires Vampira, Tor, Criswell, and Kathy's chiropractor Dr. Tom Mason to star in the film (the latter being a stand-in for Lugosi), and he and all his friends partake in a baptism ceremony at the church.

Ed soon leaves the set out of frustration to go to the nearest bar, where he has an encounter with filmmaker Orson Welles, who shares Wood's frustration: as he claims to be struggling with similar issues while working on Don Quixote, and advises him to assert his vision and resist artistic changes imposed onto him by sponsors, citing Citizen Kane as an example of a project of his wherein he had complete creative control.

Closing texts reveal that Ed was unable to gain mainstream success in the film industry before his death in 1978, and was posthumously named "Worst Director of All Time", though that honor ended up earning him worldwide acclaim and a new generation of fans.

The film also includes cameos from actors who worked with Wood on Plan 9 from Outer Space, Gregory Walcott and Conrad Brooks.

Writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski conceived the idea for a biopic of Ed Wood when they were students at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

[9] However, Burton dropped out of Mary Reilly over Columbia's decision to fast-track the film and their interest with Julia Roberts in the title role instead of Ryder.

He insisted on total creative control, and so in April 1993, a month before the original start date, Canton put Ed Wood into turnaround.

The decision sparked interest from Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, and 20th Century Fox in optioning the film rights, but Burton accepted an offer from Walt Disney Studios, who had previously produced The Nightmare Before Christmas.

"The real Fuller is a lively, savvy, humorous woman," Hanke said, "while Parker's performance presents her as a kind of sitcom moron for the first part of the film and a rather judgmental and wholly unpleasant character in her later scenes.

[27][28] The DVD edition of Ed Wood initially had difficulty reaching store shelves in the United States and Canada due to unspecified legal issues.

The website's critical consensus states, "Tim Burton and Johnny Depp team up to fête the life and work of cult hero Ed Wood, with typically strange and wonderful results.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised Burton's decision to not make a direct satire or parody of Wood's life.

"[39] Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times, thought Johnny Depp "proved" himself as an established "certified great actor".

"Depp captures all the can-do optimism that kept Ed Wood going, thanks to an extremely funny ability to look at the silver lining of any cloud.

"[40] Todd McCarthy from Variety called Ed Wood "a fanciful, sweet-tempered biopic about the man often described as the worst film director of all time.

Corliss continued, "One wonders why this Burton film is so dishwatery, why it lacks the cartoon zest and outsider ache of Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands or Batman Returns.

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski were nominated for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen by the Writers Guild of America, which was a surprise as few predicted that it would be considered.