Curated playlist
Films whose production designer won the Best Production Design Academy Award
- Batman (1989 film)Fifty thousand protest letters hit Warner Bros. when Michael Keaton was cast as Batman. Fans knew him from comedies.
- Star Wars (film)George Lucas forgot Star Wars was opening the day it came out. That night, he saw crowds lined up outside a theater.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the KingThe Return of the King won all eleven Oscars it was nominated for. No fantasy film had won Best Picture before it.
- Once Upon a Time in HollywoodOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood is a 2019 film by Quentin Tarantino, and its ending was guarded like a state secret. Tarantino kept the only copy of the third act locked in a safe. Besides Tarantino himself, only Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot…
- Ben-Hur (1959 film)MGM bet its future on Ben-Hur, a 1959 epic whose budget more than doubled to $15.175 million.
- Gone with the Wind (film)Hattie McDaniel was barred from the premiere of Gone with the Wind by Jim Crow laws, then won an Oscar.
- Hamlet (1948 film)Laurence Olivier's 1948 film of Hamlet split its first audiences down the middle. The critic Milton Shulman, writing in The Evening Standard, put it this way: "To some it will be one of the greatest films ever made, to others a deep…
- Dune (2021 film)Dune, the 2021 film directed by Denis Villeneuve, began with a filmmaker who doubted he would ever get to make it. In September 2016 the Canadian director said, "a longstanding dream of mine is to adapt Dune, but it's a long process to get…
- Avatar (2009 film)Avatar, the 2009 science fiction film from director James Cameron, began with a dream he had when he was 19 years old. In the dream, he saw a bioluminescent forest. Its trees were made of fiber-optic strands, fan lizards moved through the…
- Titanic (1997 film)Rather than cut Titanic, James Cameron gave up his $8 million director's salary.
- Wicked (2024 film)Wicked, the 2024 musical fantasy film directed by Jon M. Chu, drew some unwelcome aerial visitors early in production. Paparazzi flew over the Munchkinland set in Ivinghoe, England, by hang glider, with GoPro cameras strapped to their…
- Frankenstein (2025 film)Frankenstein, the 2025 film directed by Guillermo del Toro, began as an act of avoidance. In 2016 del Toro confessed that part of him had for more than 25 years "chickened out of making it." He felt that finishing the film would end the…
- Lincoln (film)In the film Lincoln, agents offer federal jobs to win votes to end slavery. The amendment passed by two votes.