Film Roman is an American animation studio, owned by Liberty Media as a subsidiary of Starz Media, LLC. Founded by veteran animator and director Phil Roman in early 1984, it is best known for producing the source animation for The Simpsons, King of the Hill for 20th Century Fox Animation, as well as the Garfield and Peanuts animated TV specials.

Phil Roman, veteran alumus of Chuck Jones Enterprises and Bill Melendez Productions, originally founded Film Roman in 1984 as a means to continue the production of the Garfield series of animated prime time television specials, since Melendez's own studio was unable to work on both the Garfield and Peanuts series of specials. Peanuts executive producers Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez and their aforementioned studio had produced the first two Garfield specials (Here Comes Garfield (1982) and Garfield on the Town (1983) respectively, both specials directed by Roman), but due to the wishes of both Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz and Garfield creator Jim Davis' concerns about conflicting interests in allocating production priority at Melendez's boutique studio, the production had to be moved. While he was leaving him and Melendez for his already-established studio, Roman was offered the opportunity to produce the next Garfield prime time special, Garfield in the Rough (1984), for CBS by Mendelson, which he accepted and went on to produce and direct it all by himself, winning an Emmy in the process.

Dame Helen Mirren, DBE (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; 26 July 1945) is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.

Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Chiswick, West London. Her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov (1913–1980), was of Russian origin, and her mother, Kitty (née Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda Rogers; 1909–1996), was English. Mirren's paternal grandfather, Colonel Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, was in the Tsarist Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. He later became a diplomat, and was negotiating an arms deal in Britain, when he and his family were stranded during the Russian Revolution. The former diplomat became a London cab driver to support his family.

His son, Helen Mirren's father, changed the family name to the Scottish-sounding Mirren in the 1950s and became known as Basil Mirren. He played the viola with the London Philharmonic before World War II, and later drove a cab and was a driving-test examiner, before becoming a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport. Mirren's mother was from West Ham, East London, and was the 13th of 14 children born to a butcher whose father had been the butcher to Queen Victoria. Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very anti-monarchist".

Arnold Shapiro (born February 1, 1941) is an Academy Award and 16-time Emmy Award-winning television producer and writer.

His best known work is the 1978 Oscar and Emmy-winning documentary, Scared Straight! His other productions include the CBS reality series, Rescue 911, hosted by William Shatner (1989–1996) and the CBS reality series, Big Brother (2001–2006); the ABC documentary series, Brat Camp (2005); the documentary, Scared Silent: Exposing & Ending Child Abuse, hosted by Oprah Winfrey (1992) which aired as a simulcast on CBS, NBC, PBS, followed by ABC -- it holds the distinction of being the most watched non-news documentary special ever broadcast on American TV; and Break The Silence: Kids Against Child Abuse, hosted by Jane Seymour, which received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award; Kids Killing Kids, hosted by Malcolm Jamal-Warner, an Emmy-winning docu-drama which aired simultaneously and commercial-free on CBS and Fox; and the Emmy-winning series of specials, The Teen Files, hosted by Leeza Gibbons. Shapiro sold his first show when he was 22, and since then has produced 31 series, four TV movies, and more than 90 documentaries and specials. Shapiro's most recent documentary series have been "Homeland Security USA" for ABC; "If You Really Knew Me" for MTV; and "Beyond Scared Straight" for A&E, currently in production on it's third season of 26 new episodes. Arnold Shapiro Productions has produced programs for all the broadcast networks and 14 cable channels - from MTV to HBO. Shapiro is a native of Los Angeles and a graduate of UCLA.

Dark horse is a term used to describe a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition of some sort or a contestant that seems unlikely to succeed.

The term began as horse racing parlance. A dark horse is a race horse that is not known to gamblers and thus is difficult to place betting odds on.

The earliest-known use of the phrase is in Benjamin Disraeli's novel The Young Duke (1831). Disraeli's protagonist, the Duke of St. James, attends a horse race with a surprise finish: "A dark horse which had never been thought of, and which the careless St. James had never even observed in the list, rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph."

The term has been used politically in such countries as Peru, Philippines and United States.

Politically, the term reached America in the nineteenth century when it was first applied to James K. Polk, a relatively unknown Tennessee Democrat who won the Democratic Party's 1844 presidential nomination over a host of better-known candidates. Polk won the nomination on the ninth ballot, and went on to win the presidential election.

Roman Polanski (born 18 August 1933) is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers." Polanski's films have inspired diverse directors, including the Coen brothers,Atom Egoyan,Darren Aronofsky,Park Chan-wook,Abel Ferrara, and Wes Craven.

Born in Paris to Polish parents, he moved with his family back to Poland in 1937, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Holocaust and was educated in Poland and became a director of both art house and commercial films. Polanski's first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), made in Poland, was nominated for a United States Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film but was beaten by Federico Fellini's 8½. He has since received five more Oscar nominations, along with two Baftas, four Césars, a Golden Globe Award and the Palme d'Or of the Cannes Film Festival in France. In the United Kingdom he directed three films, beginning with Repulsion (1965). In 1968 he moved to the United States, and cemented his status by directing the Oscar-winning horror film Rosemary's Baby (1968).