Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952)[3] is an American filmmaker known for directing and producing a range of successful and influential movies, often blending cutting-edge visual effects with storytelling.

Zemeckis started his career directing the comedy films I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), Used Cars (1980), and Romancing the Stone (1984).

Television gave Zemeckis his first glimpse of a world outside of his blue-collar upbringing;[10] specifically, he learned of the existence of film schools on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

His parents disapproved of the idea, Zemeckis later said, "But only in the sense that they were concerned ... for my family and my friends and the world that I grew up in, this was the kind of dream that really was impossible.

Arriving at USC that fall, Zemeckis encountered a program that was, in his words, made up of "a bunch of hippies [and] considered an embarrassment by the university".

"[14] Zemeckis graduated from USC in 1973,[15] and he and Gale cowrote the unproduced screenplays Tank and Bordello of Blood, which they pitched to John Milius, the latter of which was later developed into a film which was released in 1996.

[16][17][18] As a result of winning a Student Academy Award at USC for his film A Field of Honor,[19] Zemeckis came to the attention of Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg said, "He barged right past my secretary and sat me down and showed me this student film ... and I thought it was spectacular, with police cars and a riot, all dubbed to Elmer Bernstein's score for The Great Escape.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand was the first of several Zemeckis films to incorporate historic figures and celebrities into his movies; he used archival footage and doubles to simulate the presence of the Beatles.

After the failure of his first two films, and the Spielberg-directed 1941 (1979) (written by Gale and Zemeckis), the pair gained a reputation for writing "scripts that everyone thought were great [but] somehow didn't translate into movies people wanted to see.

They wrote scripts for other directors, including Car Pool for Brian De Palma and Growing Up for Spielberg; neither ended up getting made.

When the Center opened in March 2001, Zemeckis spoke in a panel about the future of film, alongside friends Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

Of those (including Spielberg) who clung to celluloid and disparaged the idea of shooting digitally, Zemeckis said, "These guys are the same ones who have been saying that LPs sound better than CDs.

The story, inspired by Robinson Crusoe, is about a man who becomes stranded on a tropical island and undergoes a profound physical and spiritual change.

[25] While working on The Castaway, Zemeckis also became attached to a Hitchcockian thriller titled What Lies Beneath, the story of a married couple experiencing an extreme case of empty nest syndrome that was based on an idea by Steven Spielberg.

"[25] What Lies Beneath, starring Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, was released in July 2000 to mixed reviews, but did well at the box office, grossing over $155 million domestically.

As the first major film to use performance capture, The Polar Express caused The New York Times to write that, "Whatever critics and audiences make of this movie, from a technical perspective it could mark a turning point in the gradual transition from an analog to a digital cinema.

[29] In February 2007, Zemeckis and Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook announced plans for a new performance capture film company devoted to CG-created, 3-D movies.

[30] The company, ImageMovers Digital, created films using the performance capture technology, with Zemeckis directing most of the projects which Disney distributed and marketed worldwide.

In July 2007, Variety announced that Zemeckis had written a screenplay for A Christmas Carol, based on Charles Dickens's 1843 short story of the same name, with plans to use performance capture and release it under the aegis of ImageMovers Digital.

[citation needed] On August 19, 2009, it was reported that Zemeckis and his company were in talks with Apple Corps Ltd to remake the animated film Yellow Submarine utilizing performance capture.

[35] The studio's final film, 2011's Zemeckis-produced Mars Needs Moms, was the second-worst box office failure in history, with a net loss of roughly $130 million.

Paramount Pictures and New Regency announced in February 2015 that Zemeckis would direct Brad Pitt in Allied, a romantic thriller set during World War II.

Next, Zemeckis directed the fantasy drama Welcome to Marwen, starring Steve Carell, which was released in December 2018 to mixed reviews and flopped at the box office.

[46] On May 11, it was announced that Robin Wright had been cast and that TriStar Pictures had acquired distribution rights for the United States, with Miramax handling international sales and production expected to begin in September 2022 for a theatrical release in 2024.

[49][50] His exploration of state-of-the-art special effects includes the early use of computer graphics inserted into live-action footage in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Forrest Gump, the insertion of hand-drawn animation into live-action footage in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), A Christmas Carol (2009), and Welcome to Marwen (2018).

David Thomson, a prominent film critic, wrote that "no other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose.