Corman, Roger William (1926– )

US film director and producer. His low-budget, highly profitable films are mainly in the youth and science fiction genres. One of the most consistently commercial film-makers working outside the Hollywood studio system, Corman has over 200 films to his credit since 1954. Among his directed work was a series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, beginning with The House of Usher (1960).

Corman also fostered some of the leading names in cinema, such as Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Jack Nicholson, who benefited from Corman's independent company New World Pictures and later Concorde/New Horizons. He is also known for shooting the original version of The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which he also produced, in a record two days and a night. Although Corman officially retired in 1971, he went on to produce dozens of films into the late 1990s.