Fred M. Wilcox

Wilcox worked his way up through MGM's system for years as an assistant director before earning his own directing assignments, largely on the strength of family-friendly literary adaptations that made him a trusted studio hand.

An MGM contract director best known for Lassie pictures, he was handed a Shakespeare adaptation set on an alien world — and delivered science fiction's first true A-picture. Much of his career at MGM was spent on family-friendly fare, making his one major science fiction feature a significant outlier in an otherwise gentle filmography.

The film's then-enormous budget and full-color widescreen photography were unusual for the genre at the time, signaling the studio's confidence in a project that would become his most enduring work.