Steven Lisberger

Lisberger began his career as an animator producing commercials and short films through his own small studio, developing an early fascination with video games and computer graphics that most of the film industry considered a novelty at the time.

An animator obsessed with video games and light-cycles, he talked Disney into bankrolling one of the first films to treat computer graphics as a genuine visual world rather than a gimmick. He originally began developing the project as an animated short before expanding it into a live-action and computer-animation hybrid feature.

The film's poor initial box office performance long overshadowed its now widely recognized influence on computer-generated filmmaking, a reputation that has grown steadily with each passing decade.