Jan de Bont was born in the Netherlands to a Roman Catholic Dutch family on the 22 of October 1943. He has always had a creative mind and good mentality for camera techniques and soon got into film as a popular cinematographer. He worked on a huge number of films before finding himself on the production of the film _Speed proves he is a director with a spark of his own.
Was scalped by a lion on the set of Roar .
George Lucas Industrial Light & Magic frequently handles the special effects for his films.
One of 17 children born into a Roman Catholic Dutch family.
After the huge success of his directorial debut, Speed , Tri-Star offered him their American version of Godzilla . He obtained a script and worked out a budget. Tri-Star rejected the submitted budget (reportedly over $160,000,000) and De Bont left the project which was temporarily shelved.
Was originally set to direct Minority Report , but Steven Spielberg sacked him and took over as director, probably due to the failure of The Haunting .
Father, with Trish Reeves, of son Alexander de Bont and daughter Anneke de Bont.
His full name is pronounced Yawn Duh Bawnt.
Frequently shoots with older Panavision (anamorphic) lenses, note the lens flares in Die Hard and Speed 2: Cruise Control .
Member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) since 1990.
Brother of Peter De Bont.
Was once married to Monique van de Ven. They met while Jan was operating the camera on Turks fruit , the film in which she made her debut.
In his preparations for a proposed 1994 American Godzilla movie, he sealed a fix deal with Industrial Light & Magic to ensure that the project would not go over-budget. He also lobbied for the movie to revolve around two monsters (Godzilla and a so-called Gryphon, a giant shape-shifting alien being that can fuse with Earth animals). Tri-Star, the studio in charge of the production, fired de Bont because they feared the movie would go over budget (Tri-Star did not know of his deal with ILM at the time) and cost $200 million. De Bont was given a $4 million fee for his contributions, as requested in his contract, and Tri-Star put the project on hold. Later, the studio hired Roland Emmerich to direct because they thought he would keep the film under budget -- ironically, the finished movie, Godzilla ended up costing far more than initially expected (about $200 million if we include advertising), and was met with harsh criticism. Had Tri-Star backed de Bonts original idea, the movie would have cost far less, it would have been out sooner and would likely have been better received.
In 1999 it was announced that he would direct The Adaptive Ultimate for Twentieth Century Fox who wanted Nicole Kidman to star but her schedule was full and Fox wanted it into production asap.
Using my imagination and creativity is exciting to me.
