Ralph Frederick Winter (born April 24, 1952) is an American film producer who has helped to produce blockbuster movies such as the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Star Trek series as well as I, Robot and Planet of the Apes.
Winter is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
He has helped along such film schools as the Veracity Project, Biola University, and lectured at Regent College, Vancouver.
Winter was born in Glendale, California, the son of Effie Audrey (Crawford) and Charles Frederick Winter. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied history. His first experience in production was producing training videos for Broadway Department Stores. In 1978, Winter started working in the film business for Paramount Pictures television, where he worked on Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Mork and Mindy. Following his experiences in television he started working alongside Harve Bennett on the Star Trek films. He was an associate producer on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, executive producer on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and producer on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Winter later worked for The Walt Disney Studios to make Hocus Pocus, The Puppet Masters and Inspector Gadget, 20th Century Fox, producing earlier installments in the superhero films in the X-Men and the Fantastic Four film franchises, both of these were box office hits, as well as Planet of the Apes.
Winter is also active in producing Christian movies, such as Three, based on Ted Dekker's book, and Hangman's Curse and The Visitation, both of which were novel-to-movie creations written by Christian author Frank Peretti. His latest Christian film House was released in March 2009.
In 2010, Winter partnered with producer Terry Botwick to form the production company, 1019 Entertainment. The company has produced the films, Cool It and Captive.
Winter is a Christian and his faith influenced him to co-operate on a movie based on the Left Behind series of books, although he left that project before it was completed.
1984 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
1986 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
1989 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
1991 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
2007 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer