| Charles Band | |
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Born |
Charles Robert Band December 27, 1951 (age 63) Los Angeles, California, USA |
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Alias |
Carlo Bokino Robert Talbot James Amante |
Charles Band is the creator of Full Moon Features and the producer of the Puppet Master movies.
Charles Band has sustained a remarkable track record as an industry pioneer over the past 30 years. With nearly 300 feature films under his belt, the founder and CEO of Full Moon Features shows no signs of slowing down.
In 1975 Charles Band produced his first film Mansion of the Doomed. Within a few years, Band was fast becoming a rising star in Hollywood, producing and directing movies starring established names such as John Carradine, José Ferrer, Sue Lyon, Christopher Lee, and Roddy McDowall. In 1978 Band formed MEDA Home Entertainment, the first independent home video distribution company in North America. MEDA was among the first companies to distribute films to the home video market on the beta-max format and found success with a wide variety of titles ranging from horror movies such as Halloween to family entertainment like the animated Peanuts specials.
Band went on to form Wizard Video in 1981. The company was a pioneer in the home video market and was the original video distributor for classic horror movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Spit on Your Grave, and Zombie. A forward thinking company, Wizard foresaw the potential for massive growth in home video gaming and produced adaptations of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween for the Atari 2600, which were the first horror console video games ever released. Charles Band continued to produce and direct his own films during this era, including the horror movie Parasite, which featured actress Demi Moore’s first starring role.
In 1983 Charles Band founded Empire Entertainment. Based in Los Angeles, the film production company was highly prosperous throughout the eighties and produced as many as twelve theatrical features a year. Empire Entertainment was responsible for some of the biggest cult hits of the eighties including Ghoulies, Re-Animator, Troll, and Robot Jox. Charles Band continued his track record of discovering untapped talent during this time, casting such future stars as Helen Hunt, Viggo Mortensen, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mariska Hargitay, and many more. At the end of the decade, Charles Band pioneered the direct-to-video feature in 1989 with the formation of Full Moon Entertainment and the creation of Puppet Master, which has gone on to become the most successful direct-to-video film series of all time. Band soon teamed with Paramount Pictures and Pioneer Home Entertainment for direct-to-video releases on VHS and Laserdisc. The “VideoZone” featurettes at the end of Full Moon’s movies, which showed how each film was made, presaged the behind-the-scenes bonus content that is now considered a standard among modern day DVD and Blu-ray discs. With upwards of twenty releases per year,
Band built a reputation as a versatile and frequent director of entertaining low-budget horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films. Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment, later renamed Full Moon Features, created many well-known video franchises throughout the nineties and into the new millennium. Aside from its extremely popular Puppet Master series, Full Moon produced the Trancers series starring Helen Hunt and Tim Thomerson, the Subspecies series shot on location in Transylvania, the bizarre Evil Bong series featuring Tommy Chong, and the infamous Gingerdead Man series starring Gary Busey. During this period, Band worked with many talents who would later achieve greater fame in the industry like Seth Green, Jackie Earle Haley, and David S. Goyer, to name a few. In addition to his relentless filming schedule, Charles Band continued to be very active in creating and marketing a wide variety of merchandise including T-shirts, action figures, resin statues, and 1:1 scale replicas of Full Moon’s better-known puppets and dolls.
Most recently, Charles Band has taken another step into the future with the creation of Full Moon Streaming. This pioneering video streaming service allows subscribers from all over the world to watch Full Moon films from the comfort of their computer or other Internet-ready device. Full Moon Streaming adds new movies on a weekly basis, both under Band’s established Full Moon banner and his emerging GrindhouseFlix label. Full Moon’s transition into the digital age has introduced Charles Band’s immense body of work to an entirely new generation of fans. After decades of experience in the entertainment industry, Charles Band has cemented his legacy as a progressive businessman, prolific filmmaker, and cult movie icon.