Italian film producer Agostino De Laurentiis, better known as Dino De Laurentiis, died last Wednesday in his home in Beverly Hills, California. Laurentiis was 91.

Dino De Laurentiis' last film was 2007's Virgin Territory directed by David Leland. It is a romantic comedy based on the classic Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. He has produced an estimated 500 films to the big screen, since his first film Battle of the Bulge directed by Ken Annakin in 1965.

Dino De Laurentiis is the famed producer of the Hannibal series, based on the novels by Thomas Harris. He produced the first Hannibal Lecter 1986 film Manhunter directed by Michael Man. Although he passed on producing the critically acclaimed The Silence of the Lambs, De Laurentiis produced Ridley Scott-directed Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002). In 2007, he also produced Hannibal Rising.

De Laurentiis owns the right to the character of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a role portrayed by Anthony Hopkins several times on-screen, and for which the actor won an Oscar nod in The Silence of the Lambs.

In 2001, Dino de Laurentiis received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, which is given to "creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production" from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.