In a career as celebrated as it is accomplished, producer Richard D. Zanuck commands a reputation in the motion picture industry as one of its most distinguished leaders. Mr. Zanuck is one of Hollywood's most highly acclaimed and successful independent producers. His blockbuster hits include The Sting, Jaws, The Verdict, Cocoon, Driving Miss Daisy, and Deep Impact.
Pre-eminent as an independent producer, Mr. Zanuck has earned numerous awards and citations in his more than thirty years of filmmaking. Among them, perhaps the most significant and the one that bears the greatest testatment to his well-earned stature, is the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, which was bestowed upon him and long-time associate David Brown in 1991. This illustrious accolade, given only 29 times in the Academy's history, recognizes Mr. Zanuck as "a creative producer whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality of motion picture production." A precedent-setting win and personal milestone as well, this particular Thalberg Award makes Mr. Zanuck the only second-generation recipient ever, in company with his father, Darryl F. Zanuck.
Only one year earlier, Richard Zanuck, along with Lili Fini Zanuck, took home an Oscar as producer of the Academy Award-winning Best Picture of 1989, Driving Miss Daisy, for which he also received a Golden Globe Award, The National Board of Review Award and "Producer of the Year" honors from the Producers Guild of America. Mr. Zanuck's Driving Miss Daisy award set another industry precedent -- making Richard and Darryl the only father and son in motion picture history to both win Best Picture Oscars.
As head of his own production entity, The Zanuck Company, in which he is partnered with his wife, Lili, Mr. Zanuck continues a successful career forged on a solid foundation. Upon graduation from Stanford University and military service as an army lieutenant, Mr. Zanuck joined his father as a story and production assistant on two Twentieth Century Fox films, Island in the Sun and The Sun Also Rises. At age 24, he made his debut as a full-fledged producer with the feature film Compulsion, which went on to win the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for the ensemble work of its stars Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman. He followed that up with Sanctuary, based on the William Faulkner novel, and with The Chapman Report, directed by George Cukor.
At 28, Mr. Zanuck was named president of Twentieth Century Fox and became the youngest corporate head in Hollywood annals. During his eight years at the helm, the studio recaptured the luster of its heyday and received an unprecedented 159 Oscar nominatins. Three of the films, The Sound of Music, Patton, and The French Connection went on to win Best Picture of the Year Oscars. Other successes include The Planet of the Apes series, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and M*A*S*H.
Mr. Zanuck subsequently moved from Fox to become senior executive vice-president at Warner Bros., where he and soon-to-be partner David Brown oversaw production of such box office hits as The Exorcist and Blazing Saddles.
With the formation of the Zanuck/Brown Co. in 1971, one of the motion picture industry's most distinguished and successful production companies was born. Over the ensuing decade and a half, Zanuck/Brown was responsible for such critical and box office hits as Jaws, a triple-Oscar winner and Best Picture nominee; Jaws II; The Sugarland Express, Best Screenplay winner at the Cannes Film Festival, and one of Steven Spielberg's early directorial efforts; The Sting, winner of seven Academy Awards including Best Picture; and The Verdict, nominated for five Academy Awards. Along with Lili Fini Zanuck, Zanuck/Brown also produced the double-Oscar winner, Cocoon, and its sequel, Cocoon: The Return.
The Zanuck Company, formed in 1988, scored a phenomenal success with its debut production, Driving Miss Daisy. Nominated for nine Academy Awards and winner of four, including Best Picture, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play-turned-feature film grossed in excess of $100 million at the domestic box office and with its cost of $5 million now ranks as one of the most profitable releases in Warner Bros. history.
Mr. Zanuck followed up the major success of Driving Miss Daisy with the critically acclaimed Rush starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jason Patric, based on the bestselling book by Kim Wozencraft. The film represented the directorial debut of Lili Fini Zanuck, and its score by Eric Clapton became one of the most acclaimed of 1992.
Other producing credits with Lili Fini Zanuck include Rich in Love which reunited the Driving Miss Daisy creative team of the Zanucks with director Bruce Beresford and writer Alfred Uhry; and Wild Bill, Walter Hill's fact-based look at the legendary frontiersman Wild Bill Hickok starring Oscar nominee Jeff Bridges won widespread critical acclaim, as did Mulholland Falls, a drama set in the fifties about a team of elite L.A. police officers with an all-star cast including Nick Nolte, Melanie Griffith and John Malkovich.
Mr. Zanuck's release, Deep Impact, for DreamWorks SKG and Paramount, has grossed close to $250 million thus far in the worldwide marketplace making it the first bona fide blockbuster of the 1998 summer season.
More recently, The Zanuck Company has joined forces with Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood to produce True Crime, a suspense thriller based on Andrew Klavan's bestselling novel, in which Eastwood also stars and directs for Warner Bros. release. And, in collaboration with HBO, the Zanucks are developing The Decalogue, consisting of ten one-hour films, each based on one of The Ten Commandments of the Bible, set in contemporary Los Angeles.
(August 1998)
