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During the first decade of the 2000s, Laura Ziskin was the power producer behind Sony's mega-successful Spider-Man movie franchise. While she was creatively and financially building a trilogy of superhero movies that would go on to net the studio $2.5 billion dollars, Ziskin was also fighting a battle with breast cancer after first being diagnosed with the disease in 2004.
Ziskin began her career in show business as a production assistant, the bottom rung of the ladder for crew members working on a film. After making connections and building her name around the town, in 1985 she finally began her foray as a movie producer by making the 1985 comedy-romance Murphy's Law which starred Sally Field. She followed it up with No Way Out the year after, a well-received thriller that starred Kevin Costner. When the 1990s got started, she found her career going up a big step by being an executive producer on Pretty Woman, the movie that made Julia Roberts an A-list star.
In 2002, the same year that the first Spider-Man movie was released, Ziskin produced the 74th Academy Awards, the first one held at the Kodak Theater. Spider-Man's success allowed for the creation of two more sequels and nearly a third one until Sony decided it was time for a reboot. She was the producer on that film, The Amazing Spider-Man, which is set for release next year.
She used her personal experience fighting cancer to help co-found Stand Up To Cancer, an organization designed to raise funds and awareness for research into a cure for the disease. Nine months ago she was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times for a Stand Up To Cancer live event she was helping produce. At the time she was again battling the return of the cancer, feeling tired and regrowing her hair from chemotherapy treatment. "Everyone is affected by it. It’s a part of life," she told the paper. "The more we focus on it, the more people will say, ‘Maybe we gotta do something.'"
Sony Pictures has promised that it will release a longer statement about the loss of 61-year-old Ziskin soon. She is survived by her Oscar-winning screenwriter husband Alvin Sargent and a daughter from an earlier marriage.
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