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A filmmaker who first gained notoriety with an acclaimed documentary of sci-fi and fantasy producer/director George Pal, Arnold Leibovit transitioned into the world of fantasy feature filmmaking himself as executive producer of the 2002 adaptation of H.G. Wells' work The Time Machine. Leibovit became fascinated with the groundbreaking work of Pal at age nine, when he first saw the 1960 MGM adaptation of The Time Machine. Pal's vividly realized work on that film, as well as Destination Moon, The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, and When Worlds Collide, served as a great influence on Leibovit's career, and after working on several documentaries in the 1970s, he made it his goal to chronicle Pal's life and work in a full-length profile. That film, The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal, was completed independently and released to much acclaim in 1985; Leibovit followed it up with another documentary about the history of stop-motion animation, The Puppetoon Movie (1987), in which Pal's work also figured prominently. Around this time, Lebovit secured the rights to the 1960 retelling of The Time Machine, and toiled for over a decade to see it return to the big screen, which it did via Dreamworks' big-budget, effects-laden spectacle, directed by Simon Wells. After Time Machine, Leibovit concentrated on remaking another Pal conception, The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao.