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Italian producer Fulvio Lucisano, who shepherded a slew of cult B-movies such as “Planet of the Vampires” and “What Have You Done to Solange?” and had a close rapport with Roger Corman, has died. He was 98.

His daughter Paola confirmed Lucisano’s death on Tuesday in a statement sent to Italian news agency ANSA, writing: “Rest in peace, Dad.”

Over seven decades in the film business, Lucisano mounted more than 150 projects in a panoply of genres, ranging from Mario Bava’s pulpy classic “Planet of the Vampires” to Franco Zeffirelli’s “The Young Toscanini,” starring Elizabeth Taylor as a primadonna soprano, as well as Buster Keaton-starrer “War, Italian Style.”

Lucisano’s genre purview included sci-fi, horror, Italian comedies and soft porn, but also highbrow works by some of Italy’s most revered auteurs like Liliana Cavani, Marco Ferreri, Lina Wertmuller and European arthouse greats like Carlos Saura, whose 1999 work “Goya in Bordeaux” Lucisano was particularly proud of.

“Genres don’t exist,” Lucisano said in a 2008 interview with Variety. “The only thing I care about is the moviegoers. They are our judge.”

In the interview, Lucisano said he had always paid heed to the advice Keaton gave him in 1966 on the Rome set of “War, Italian Style,” in which Keaton played a hapless German general, one of his last roles.

“He told me: ‘Any kind of movie you make, look at what happens in the first reel, and make sure that, if it’s a comedy, there’s a laugh early on; if it’s a drama or an action movie, then something surprising has to happen in the first 10 minutes,’” Lucisano said.

The Rome-born Lucisano started out in production in 1949, assisting an American company making a Catholic documentary shot inside the Vatican and St. Peter’s to commemorate the coming year’s Holy Year Jubilee. A lawyer’s son who had a degree in law himself, Lucisano personally drafted his own contracts for most of his career.

He set up Italian Intl. Film (IIF) in 1958 and soon started collaborating with Los Angeles-based American Intl. Pictures, James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff’s low-budget Hollywood studio that spawned Corman’s films, which were distributed in Italy by Lucisano’s Italian Intl. Film.

Their collaboration started with 1962’s “Warriors Five,” a WWII drama starring Jack Palance; followed by “Sexy magico,” a faux docu about sexual rites around the world; and in 1964 came campy Jane Mansfield-starrer “Primitive Love,” a mondo sex farce in a similar vein.

in 1965, Lucisano proudly shepherded Bava’s “Planet of the Vampires,” his first picture shot in Cinecitta’s legendary Studio 5, later to become Federico Fellini’s second home. “Planet of the Vampires,” considered a major influence on Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” was a co-production with American Intl. Pictures.

“What Have You Done to Solange?” is one of Lucisano’s relatively early productions that he liked to reminisce about. It’s a now-classic 1972 England-set giallo and a favorite of Quentin Tarantino, helmed by Massimo Dallamano with a typically atmospheric Ennio Morricone score.

In 2005, the Venice Film Festival celebrated Lucisano with a special Fulvio Lucisano Day as part of its Tarantino-presented “Secret History of Italian Cinema” retrospective, during which restored copies of both “Vampires” and “Solange” screened.

But besides Italian B-movies, Lucisano also shepherded a slew of artier titles.

In 1975, just three years after “Solange,” Lucisano made Mauro Bolognini’s “Per le antiche scale” (“Down the Ancient Staircase”), a dark drama starring Marcello Mastroianni as a psychologist trying to isolate an “insanity virus” in a Fascist-era asylum. It won the Locarno Film Festival’s Special Jury nod.

He produced Liliana Cavani’s Nazi-era “The Berlin Affair,” Luigi Comencini’s “A Boy From Calabria” and Francesca Archibugi’s 1993 foreign-language Oscar-nommed debut “Il grande cocomero” (“The Great Pumpkin”), just to name a few of his forays into auteur territory.

As a distributor, IIF has released hundreds of pics, including “Thelma and Louise,” thanks to a strong relationship he had with MGM; Andrei Konchalowski’s “Maria’s Lovers,” as part of a longstanding deal in those days with Menahem Golan’s Cannon; and “Four Weddings and a Funeral” through his tie at the time with Polygram.

Lucisano served as president of Italy’s motion picture association ANICA from 1998 to 2001.

During his illustrious career, Lucisano was honored with five David di Donatello awards, including a lifetime achievement honor in 2009, as well as four Nastri d’Argento Silver Ribbon awards.

Lucisano is survived by his daughters, Federica and Paola, who run his now publicly traded company called Lucisano Media Group.

Bill Rasmussen, a former local-news sports director who parlayed an interest in the nascent business of satellite television into the launch of the sports-media giant known as ESPN, has died after a battle with Parkinson’s disease. The entrepreneur and founder was 93 years old.

Rasmussen in 1978 was idling in traffic on Connecticut’s Interstate 84 after acquiring a satellite transponder from RCA, and decided to launch a new network devoted only to sports on a single acre near the small town of Bristol. Their Entertainment and Sports Programming network employed just 80 staffers at the time of its launch in September of 1979, and telecast Connecticut sports to state residents. Within months, Getty Oil would buy up a majority of the enterprise, while brewing giant Anheuser-Busch agreed to a substantial advertising contract. But investors pushed the founder out by 1980. ABC bought out the stakes of both Getty and Rasmussen family members in 1984.

“Bill was a remarkable man — a visionary and an innovator who conceived the idea of a network entirely devoted to sports,” said ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro, in a statement. “Quite simply, none of us would be here today if it wasn’t for Bill’s passion and all the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit he put into building ESPN in the late 1970s — key aspects of our company culture that still carry on to this day.”

Indeed, some key elements of ESPN were birthed under Rasmussen. The opening program on ESPN was a show called “SportsCenter,” hosted at the time by Lee Leonard and George Grande. The series remains on air at the network.

Rasmussen also introduced round-the-clock sports programming and coverage of the early rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in the spring of 1980, which drew national attention to ESPN.

In 2026, ESPN employs more than 5,900 employees around the world, and programs eight U.S. television networks plus the sports programming on ABC, along with a mobile app and a burgeoning and direct-to-consumer service, a suite of radio programs and podcasts and social and digital feeds. The outlet, now controlled by Disney, with Hearst and the NFL counted as minority investors, is home to such sports staples as “Monday Night Football,” the hot-talk show “First Take” and hours and hours of NFL and NBA telecasts, among other sports coverage.

“Bill was our George Washington and a good friend,” said Chris Berman, who joined ESPN three weeks after the network launched in 1979, in a statement. “He was such a grateful person and every sports fan can be grateful for Bill. He wasn’t a glass half-full guy; his glass was always overflowing with optimism. He greeted everyone with a smile and we can all smile knowing Bill’s legacy.”

Bill Rasmussen was born in Chicago on October 15, 1932, in Chicago and raised in nearby Columbus Manor, IL. He played sports in his youth, earning an invitation to a minor league affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. Instead, he gravitated to business, earnings a bachelor’s degree in economics from DePauw University in Greencastle, IN. After graduating in 1954, he served in the United States Air Force and later earned an MBA from Rutgers University.

His media career began at WTTT radio in Amherst, Mass., in 1962. In 1965, he moved to WWLP, a TV station in Springfield, Mass., where he spent eight years as sports director and two years as news director. During these years, he handled numerous football, basketball, baseball and hockey play-by-play assignments on both radio and television. In 1974, he joined the New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association as communications director, serving until the conclusion of the 1977-78 season.

After leaving ESPN, Rasmussen worked as a consultant to sports rights holders and media companies. He also remained active with his own start-up ventures in sports. He remained a frequent guest on business and sports radio talk shows and authored two books, “Sports Junkies Rejoice! The Birth of ESPN” and most recently “ESPN: One Giant Leap for Fankind,” published in 2023. Rasmussen collaborated with Tenero Productions for a documentary and book project “Sports Heaven: The Birth of ESPN” on his life that was released in 2026.

Rasmussen was predeceased by his wife of 56 years, Lois, in 2011 and is survived by two sons, Scott Rasmussen and his wife Laura and Glenn Rasmussen; his daughter Lynn Van Hollebeke and her husband Louie; seven grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. In addition to his wife, Bill was predeceased by his brothers Robert and Donald Rasmussen, sister Vivien and grandson Justin Van Hollebeke.