Born December 13, 1934, Zanuck, was the son of legendary producer and studio head Darryl F. Zanuck, and amassed his own impressive resume of notable films going back several decades. Zanuck gave a young TV director named Steven Spielberg his entrée into features with the low-budget road adventure “The Sugarland Express,” which was well-reviewed but only modestly successful financially. Their next collaboration, “Jaws,” fared somewhat better. That movie virtually invented the summer blockbuster and changed the movie industry forever.
That kicked off a wild run of movies, good, bad and indifferent, that made Zanuck a force to be reckoned with during the seventies and eighties. Zanuck is a credited producer or executive producer on titles such as Clint Eastwood's “The Eiger Sanction,” the biopic“MacArthur,” which starred Gregory Peck, “Jaws 2,” Sidney Lumet's “The Verdict” with Paul Newman and James Mason, Ron Howard's “Cocoon” and “Driving Miss Daisy.
In the nineties he produced some forgettable commercial fare, ranging from “Chain Reaction” to “Deep Impact,” and Lee Tamahori’s “Mulholland Falls,” with Nick Nolte, Melanie Griffith, Chazz Palminteri, Chris Penn, Jennifer Connelly and Treat Williams.
He also produced “Road to Perdition,” hands-down the best gangster movie since “The Godfather.” That movie was directed by Sam Mendes, and starred Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Daniel Craig.
More recently he emerged as the producer of most of Tim Burton’s output, including “Big Fish,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” “Alice in Wonderland” and this summer’s “Dark Shadows.”
http://www.examiner.com/article/prod...es-at-age-77-2