The Zanuck Company

Richard and Lili Zanuck formed their production company after producing Cocoon (1985), another hit movie about old folks. Before he was old himself, Zanuck was a top executive at 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., which distributed Miss Daisy.

Son of legendary Hollywood producer and Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck, Richard joined Warner Brothers after being fired from 20th Century Fox by his father during a company shake-up.During his career Zanuck worked with Stephen Spielberg to produce Jaws, and with his wife, Lili, hitched up with Tim Burton to produce Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Dark Shadows, among others. (Source)

One not-so-successful item on Zanuck's resume is the failed TV pilot of Driving Miss Daisy. (See our "Best of the Web" section for more on this.)It aired in the summer of 1992, and featured Joan Plowright and Robert Guillaume doing their best Daisy and Hoke impersonations against a canned laugh track. The show was dead on arrival, and wasn't picked up. Zanuck himself lived another twenty years. (Source)