Jan de Bont

De Bont was born to a Roman Catholic family in Eindhoven, Netherlands, one of 17 children.

His earliest works were made while studying at the Amsterdam Film Academy with Dutch avant-garde director Adriaan Ditvoorst. He first became known in the Netherlands as the cinematographer for the infamous Blue Movie in 1971, followed by the Turkish Delight (1973), directed by Paul Verhoeven. After Max Havelaar, he worked frequently in American films during the 1980s. While serving as cinematographer for the 1981 film Roar, de Bont was one of the many crew members to suffer on-set injuries, with a lion lifting his scalp. The injury required 220 stitches. In 1988, he was director of photography on the critically acclaimed action film Die Hard.

De Bont made his directorial debut with the sleeper hit action thriller Speed. He followed this up with the even more successful Twister in 1996. His output since has had mixed reception. In 1997, he returned to direct Speed's sequel Cruise Control, which fared much worse both critically and commercially. In 1999, he oversaw the commercially successful remake of The Haunting, which also received negative reviews from critics. De Bont's final directorial outing was the 2003 action adventure film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life, sequel to the 2001 film.

De Bont began pre-production on an American Godzilla film for a summer 1996 release, but quit at the end of 1994 when Sony Pictures Entertainment (Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures's parent company) refused to approve his budget request. He was eventually replaced by Roland Emmerich, who rewrote the script in addition to directing. While critically panned, Emmerich's Godzilla was moderately successful at the box-office. At one point, de Bont mooted an asteroid/space shuttle disaster film project called Galileo's Wake as a possible follow-up to Speed 2: Cruise Control. In 1997, de Bont was originally attached to direct the film Minority Report, which Steven Spielberg would end up directing instead. Also that year, de Bont was attached to direct Supertanker at Centropolis Entertainment. Bill Pullman and Samuel L. Jackson were set to star to the film. In May that same year it was reported the 20th Century Fox thriller film Zero Hour would be his next film; though he would drop out by the end of the year. In February 1998, Fox optioned the rights to Gregory Benford's sci-fi novel Cosm for de Bont's Blue Tulip Productions to produce as a feature film, with Robert Collins attached as script writer. In March he was developing to produce and direct the action film Pathfinder for Paramount Pictures. By September, he was confirmed to additionally direct Cosm. Other projects touted as potential directing vehicles for de Bont that year included the Tazio Nuvolari biopic Nuvolari, the time travel thriller Old City, and the thriller Hindenberg. In 1999 it was announced that he would direct The Adaptive Ultimate for Fox, with Nicole Kidman attached to star but her schedule was too busy to commit at the time. In January 2000, it was reported that de Bont would take on Dust as his next film, which would have been based upon the novel of the same name by Charles Pellegrino. De Bont planned to develop the script with his production partner Lucas Foster under his company label, Blue Tulip, based on an adaptation already written by Ted Humphrey. Peter Dowling, Patrick Massett and John Zinman also worked on the script. In June 2000, de Bont was considering directing either Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat, Food, LAX, or The 28th Amendment as his next film. None of the projects were produced, though the latter was reportedly further developed with Artists Production Group for Warner Bros. More recently, de Bont was attached as the director of an early version of The Meg, the Dracula sequel The Undead, the John Cusack action thriller vehicle Stopping Power, the Point Break sequel Indo, the live action Mulan, which would have starred Zhang Ziyi, as well as a proposed remake of the Johnny Cash film Five Minutes to Live written by Raul Inglis. De Bont's passion project, a film titled Riders in the Sky, about Indian tribes in the Midwest has been stuck in development hell for many years. "It was a beautiful story, very imaginative," said de Bont. The project went as far as locations having already been scouted and the sets designed before being cancelled.

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