Tim Burton will receive this year's career achievement award from the Venice Film Festival, organisers announced Wednesday.
The festival called Burton, 58, "one of the authentic visionaries of contemporary cinema".
Citing hits such as Batman, Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow, it said "Burton's films switch from enchantment to melancholy, often inside a single image, and his fantastic landscapes combine gothic horror and eccentric comedy".
It lauded the way Burton left his "unique and personal mark" on works that never compromised his art while meeting box-office expectations.
Festival Director Marco Muller called Burton - also the creator of cult hits like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorshands - "a movie genius, the most imaginative son of the new age of the art".
"He contrives to build dream-like worlds of the highest visionary impact which appeal to the Eternal Child inside all of us," Muller said.
Burton chose Venice to premiere his two animation masterpieces, the Nightmare Before Christmas in 1994 and Corpse Bride in 2005.
He is currently working on an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway smash musical-thriller Sweeney Todd, with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen and Christopher Lee.
Burton will receive his Golden Lion on September 5, midway through the August 29-September 8 fest.
Organisers said a Tim Burton Day would celebrate his "unique gifts".
