Ilya Salkind
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Ilya Salkind (born Ilya Juan Salkind Dominguez, July 27, 1947 in Mexico City) grew up in the world of motion pictures. At the age of one, Ilya was photographed sitting on the lap of Zsa Zsa Gabor. His grandfather, Michael Salkind, was one of the pioneers of silent films and produced Joyless Street (1925), featuring then-relatively-unknown Greta Garbo in her first major role. Afterwards, his grandfather Mikhail and his own father Alexander Salkind joined their forces to supervise many successful films, from Orson Welles' The Trial (1962) to Abel Gance's Austerlitz (1959). Soon, beginning in 1969, Ilya became the third generation of this highly-successful movie-making family.
Ilya Salkind and his father accumulated a stunning filmography, starting with The Three Musketeers (1973) and its 1974 follow-up, The Four Musketeers — marking the first major instance in which a major motion picture and its immediate sequel were shot back-to-back, simultaneously. After dazzling fans of historical cinema even more with their 1977 adaptation of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, Team Salkind pioneered the era of the superhero film franchise with Superman: The Movie, the first major comic book film of all time. Ilya and Alexander followed up with the successful Superman II (1980) and the less successful Superman III (1983). Ilya did not want to do another Superman film after Superman III and instead decided to again explore uncharted territory with the first film about a Superheroine with Supergirl (1984). Team Salkind's last great exploration into the realm of fantasy was 1985's Santa Claus: The Movie.
The Salkinds' Superboy, starring John Haymes Newton in the title role during its first year, Gerard Christopher as the Boy of Steel for the remainder of the show's existence, and Stacy Haiduk as Lana Lang, lasted four seasons, running for 100 episodes. Following the Team's last film, Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992), Ilya and his then wife, Jane Chaplin (daughter of Geraldine and grand-niece of Charlie Chaplin) settled in Orlando, Florida, where much of the Superboy series had been filmed. There, Ilya and Jane took a sabbatical and devoted their time to raising their two sons. In 1999, the couple amicably separated.
Returning to Los Angeles in 2003, the producer launched the Ilya Salkind Company in the late summer of that year. The company's first project, Alexander the Great from Macedonia, was shot on location in Greece and Egypt and is scheduled for release in 2006. Ilya has several major motion pictures slated for the coming years. The Ilya Salkind Company is actively in pre-production on the film The Abominable Snowman jointly with Emmett/Furla Films (Rambo IV: In the Serpent's Eye). Ilya is also producing the horror film Zombies written and directed by horror legend Tom Savini (Night of the Living Dead), and The Nautilus along with William J. MacDonald (HBO's Rome), based on two masterpieces written by Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island. On the DVD release of Superboy: The Complete First Season in 2006, Salkind appeared as himself on the documentary featurette "Superboy: Getting Off the Ground" and provided audio commentary with series star John Haymes Newton on two episodes. He also recently appeared as himself on the 2006 television documentary Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman talking about his time producing the Superman movies.
