Ovidio G. Assonitis

Did You Know?

• In the mid-1960s, Assonitis built a distribution network in the Far East, distributing over 900 films from offices in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, and Indonesia.
• His former partners and associates include HRH Prince Anusom Yukol, John Litton, the Shaw Brothers, Alexander Tedja, and Kong Cho Yee.

Independent producing career

By the late 1960s, Assonitis began producing films himself, starting with the documentary The Labyrinth of Sex and the giallo thriller Who Saw Her Die?, released at the height of the giallo genre. That same year, he released Man from the Deep River, a film inspired by A Man Called Horse, which became the first of the Italian cannibal movie subgenre. The following year, he produced The Last Snows of Spring, a commercial success in the United Kingdom that launched child actor Renato Cestiè. After an unsuccessful attempt to buy the screen rights to William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, Assonitis hired writers to create an original possession story, which became Beyond the Door. This film marked his directorial debut under the pseudonym Oliver Hellman. Originally set for release by American International Pictures, it was picked up by Film Ventures International and earned $15 million at the US box office and over $40 million worldwide, prompting a copyright infringement lawsuit from Warner Bros. He then produced Laure, based on experiences of Emmanuelle Arsan, originally set to star Linda Lovelace, who was recast and later dropped. That year he also produced Take All of Me, directed by Luigi Cozzi and co-written by his wife Sonia Molteni. His second directorial effort, Tentacles, was produced with American International Pictures after the success of Jaws, starring John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins, and Henry Fonda, grossing $3 million on a $750,000 budget.

Trans World Entertainment

In 1987, Assonitis signed a multi-picture deal with Trans World Entertainment. The first film produced was The Farm, released as The Curse, a science-fiction horror based on H. P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space, starring Wil Wheaton and Claude Akins. It earned $1,169,922 in its opening weekend and finished with a gross of $1,930,001, with strong home video sales. Over the next two years, he produced Sonny Boy, The Bite, and Amok Train. The Bite and Amok Train were retitled Curse II: The Bite and Beyond the Door III to capitalize on earlier successes. A planned horror film titled The Frame was never made.

Cannon Pictures Inc.

In 1989, Assonitis became chairman of the newly relaunched Cannon Pictures Inc., hired by Giancarlo Parretti after Menahem Golan's departure. He green-lit several projects: Lambada, Midnight Ride, No Place to Hide, Fifty/Fifty, Over the Line (which he also directed, his final directing credit), American Ninja 4: The Annihilation, and American Ninja 5. He developed a project called Wings with Michael Dudikoff, but it was never made. Due to financial issues, his contract was terminated in 1990. Assonitis sued Pathé Communications for wrongful termination and won in 1998, receiving $2.9 million in compensation.

Return to independent producing

After his termination from Cannon Pictures Inc., Assonitis took the rights to Scent of a Woman to Universal Pictures, which remade the film starring Al Pacino and directed by Martin Brest. Released in 1993, it earned $63,095,253 in the US and $71 million internationally, totaling $134,095,253 worldwide. Assonitis, who originated the project and went uncredited on the final cut, took out a full-page ad in Variety congratulating the studio and director and praising Pacino. In the mid-1990s, he worked as a consultant to Ibrahim Moussa's Stone Canyon Investments. In 1998, Paul Guez bought into the company, and a deal with MGM Animation was announced for three films, but only Tom Sawyer was produced before MGM Animation folded. A first-look deal with Reginald Hudlin's Hudlin Bros. yielded no films. After producing Sabrina Goes to Rome in 1998, he produced the 2003 Italian slasher Red Riding Hood. In 2021, he received the German Independence Honorary Award from Oldenburg International Film Festival, which screened several of his films. He announced a sequel to Beyond the Door titled Embryo for 2023, with Juliet Mills returning. In October 2024, he received the Time Machine Award from Sitges Film Festival, where Beyond the Door was screened for its 50th anniversary. He also announced a teen romance film, Shadow of Light, to be directed by Stefano Poda.