The wavy brunette and elegant producer Marianne Maddalena has Italian origins, but she was born in Lansing, Michigan in early 60s. She attended Michigan State University and she then traveled to Europe, to study and work in Italy and France. She enter in the world of cinema in early 1986, when she had a job from Warner Bros. on "Deadly Friend". She was the personal secretary for Wes Craven and they became very good friends. So, in late 1986, Craven call her to be his assistant in "The Serpent and the Rainbow": shooting started on february 1987 in Haiti and it was very difficult for all the crew and cast members. In 1988, when the film was released, Marianne wanted to start in production: Craven was developing "Shocker" for Alive Films and she was attached to produce it with Barin Kumar. The budget was really limited but when the film was released, it took $16m at box office. After her first success, Marianne became an official co- producer for Wes Craven: in 1990 she was involved in the production of NBC TV movie "Night Visions" and two years later she worked again for TV on the series "Nightmare Cafe". Between those TV works, she produced "The People Under the Stairs" and with "New Nightmare" (the first film that she produced alone) she was nominated at Independent Spirit Awards. After executive production for the flop "Vampire in Brooklyn" and hit "Scream", she produced "Scream 2", "Music of the Heart" and "Scream 3".