The George Pal Memorial Award is presented each year, by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, in conjunction with their annual Saturn Award ceremony. The award is given to those who have shown exemplary work in the respective film genres. It is named in honor of

George Pal George Pal (born György Pál Marczincsak; ; February 1, 1908 – May 2, 1980) was a Hungarian-American animator, film director and producer, principally associated with the fantasy and science-fiction genres. He became an American citizen after ...

, a Hungarian-born American animator and film producer, principally associated with the

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

genre. The latest honoree is screenwriter and film producer

Simon Kinberg Simon David Kinberg (born August 2, 1973) is a British-born American filmmaker. He is best known for his work on the 20th Century Fox ''X-Men'' film franchise, and has also written such films as '' Mr. & Mrs. Smith'' and '' Sherlock Holmes''. He ...

as of June 2022.

Recipients

Below is a list of recipients and the year the award was presented:

1970s

* C. Dean Anderson (1975) * Don Fanzo (1975) *

Gloria Swanson Gloria May Josephine Swanson (March 27, 1899April 4, 1983) was an American actress and producer. She first achieved fame acting in dozens of silent films in the 1920s and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, most f ...

(1975) *

Fay Wray Vina Fay Wray (September 15, 1907 – August 8, 2004) was a Canadian/American actress best known for starring as Ann Darrow in the 1933 film ''King Kong''. Through an acting career that spanned nearly six decades, Wray attained international r ...

(1975)

1980s

John Badham John MacDonald Badham (born August 25, 1939) is an English television and film director, best known for his films ''Saturday Night Fever'' (1977), ''Dracula'' (1979), ''Blue Thunder'' (1983), ''WarGames'' (1983), ''Short Circuit'' (1986), and ...

(1980) * Nicholas Meyer (1984) *

Douglas Trumbull Douglas Hunt Trumbull (; April 8, 1942 – February 7, 2022) was an American film director and innovative visual effects supervisor. He pioneered methods in special effects and created scenes for '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'', ''Close Encounters ...

(1985) *

Charles Band Charles Robert Band (born December 27, 1951) is an American film producer and director, known for his work on horror comedy movies. Career Band entered film production in the 1970s with Charles Band Productions. Dissatisfied with distributo ...

(1986) *

Arnold Leibovit Arnold Leibovit (born June 18, 1950) is an American director, producer, and screenwriter of feature films and musical productions. An acting member of the Producers Guild of America, he has produced, directed, and written several feature films. ...

(1987) *

Larry Cohen Lawrence George Cohen (July 15, 1936 – March 23, 2019) was an American screenwriter, producer, and director of film and television, best known as an author of horror and science fiction films — often containing police procedural and ...

(1988) * David Cronenberg (1989)

1990s

William Friedkin William "Billy" Friedkin (born August 29, 1935)Biskind, p. 200. is an American film and television director, producer and screenwriter closely identified with the " New Hollywood" movement of the 1970s. Beginning his career in documentaries in ...

(1991) * Gene Roddenberry (1992) * Frank Marshall (1993) *

Wah Chang Wah Ming Chang (August 2, 1917 – December 22, 2003) was an American designer, sculptor, and artist. With the encouragement of his adoptive father, James Blanding Sloan, he began exhibiting his prints and watercolors at the age of seven ...

(1994) *

Gene Warren Gene Warren Sr. (August 12, 1916 – July 17, 1997) was born in Denver, Colorado, and won an Academy Award for the special effects on George Pal's ''The Time Machine'' in 1960. He also contributed to such projects as '' The Way of Peace'' (1947), ...

(1994) * Stan Winston (1994) * Robert Zemeckis (1995) *

John Carpenter John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American filmmaker, actor, and composer. Although he worked in various film genres, he is most commonly associated with horror, action, and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s. He ...

(1996) * Kathleen Kennedy (1997) *

Dean Devlin Dean Devlin (born August 27, 1962) is an American screenwriter, producer, director, and actor of film and television. He is best known for his collaborations with director Roland Emmerich, and for his work on the The Librarian (franchise), ''Li ...

(1998) *

Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery fictio ...

(1999)

2000s

Douglas Wick Douglas Wick is an American film producer whose work includes producing '' Gladiator'', ''Stuart Little'', and ''Memoirs of a Geisha''. Life and career Wick is the son of actress Mary Jane (Woods) and United States Information Agency director ...

(2000) * Sam Raimi (2001) * Samuel Z. Arkoff (2002) * Ridley Scott (2004) *

Ray Harryhausen Raymond Frederick Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) was an American-British animator and special effects creator who created a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation". His works include the animation for '' Mi ...

(2006) * Guillermo del Toro (2008)

2010s

Alex Kurtzman Alexander Hilary Kurtzman (born September 7, 1973) is an American filmmaker. He is best known for his work on the ''Star Trek'' franchise since 2009, co-writing the scripts to ''Transformers'' (2007), '' Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'' and ...

(2010) *

Roberto Orci Roberto Gaston Orcí (born July 20, 1973) is a Mexican-American film and television screenwriter and producer. He began his longtime collaboration with Alex Kurtzman while at school in California. Together they have been employed on television ...

(2010) *

Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, inclu ...

(2012) * Gregory Nicotero (2014)Academy Press Release
saturnawards.org. Retrieved May 26, 2014. (PDF) *

(2015)

References

External links

Official Saturn Awards website
Saturn Awards Lifetime achievement awards Mass media science fiction awards Fantasy awards Awards established in 1975 {{fantasy-stub