Zanuck/Brown Company

Richard D. Zanuck was the son of Darryl F. Zanuck, the longtime head of 20th Century Fox, and grew up in the heart of Hollywood. He eventually took over leadership of the studio, but was removed in 1970 during a contentious boardroom conflict between father and son. David Brown, the studio's head of story operations, was also dismissed in the same incident. Rather than part ways, Zanuck and Brown joined forces and in 1972 founded the Zanuck/Brown Company, which soon entered into a production deal with Universal.

The company quickly demonstrated a strong ability to identify talent. They gave a first-time feature opportunity to young television director Steven Spielberg, starting with the road drama The Sugarland Express and then with the troubled, over-budget production about a great white shark terrorizing a beach town. That film, Jaws, opened in the summer of 1975, became the highest-grossing film up to that point, and established the model for the wide-release summer blockbuster that remains central to Hollywood today.

Zanuck and Brown proved to be more than one-hit producers. They followed Jaws with its sequel, the Michael Crichton action film The Island, and particularly with Sidney Lumet's courtroom drama The Verdict, starring Paul Newman, which was nominated for Best Picture and demonstrated their ability to produce beyond spectacle. In 1985, they succeeded again with the gentle science-fiction film Cocoon.

After sixteen years and a partnership that had endured the personal fallout of Richard Zanuck's family situation, the two producers ended their company in 1988 to pursue individual projects. Zanuck formed a new venture with his wife, Lili, which won Best Picture the following year with Driving Miss Daisy, while Brown continued producing independently. The Zanuck/Brown Company was not dissolved in failure, but at the height of its success, remembered as the production company that brought a mechanical shark to the screen and transformed the film industry.