Description

Willis O’Brien: Lost Worlds, Giant Apes and Dinosaurs Vol. 2 by Greg Kulon

Hardcover – Kulon Ventures – Oct 2025  – 379 pages

Willis O’Brien: Lost Worlds, Giant Apes, and Dinosaurs provides the most detailed record ever assembled of the life and career of the pioneering stop-motion animation genius behind such ground-breaking films as The Lost World, King Kong, and Mighty Joe Young. A century ago, when the film Industry was still in its adolescent growing pains, Willis (“OBie”) O’Brien created astounding images of the fantastic and impossible that startled audiences of his time and continue to inspire modern cinema.

Building upon five decades of collecting Willis O’Brien memorabilia and extensively researched over the last seven years, Greg Kulon’s review of tens of thousands of pages of production files, scripts, personal correspondence, and interviews housed in numerous public archives and private collections—most never published—have come together with exclusive photographs and artwork to tell the full and complete story of OBie’s life and career. Volume 1 of Willis O’Brien: Lost Worlds, Giant Apes, and Dinosaurs (still available on Amazon) won the 2025 David J. Skal Rondo Award for Research from the Classic Horror Awards.

Volume 2 of this 3-volume set begins as O’Brien again works with producer Merian Cooper following the success with King Kong and includes extensive coverage of their production of SHE, The Last Days of Pompeii, and what might have been their biggest project yet, the epic War Eagles (derailed by World War II). O’Brien then developed the Western dinosaur adventure, Gwangi, before reuniting with many of the Kong team for Mighty Joe Young. That film resulted in an Academy Award® for O’Brien and launched the career of stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen.

Volume 2 of Willis O’Brien: Lost Worlds, Giant Apes, and Dinosaurs includes a Foreword by Vanessa Harryhausen, (daughter of Ray Harryhausen), a cover painting by Oscar®-nominated visual effects artist Mark Sullivan, and over 840 color and black and white photos, production artwork and storyboards.