Craig Zadan sparked a renewed interest in live musicals with his TV productions
Before there was "Hamilton" or "Dear Evan Hansen," there was Craig Zadan.
In a decades-long career that spanned film, theater and television, the producer, who died Monday at age 69 as a result of complications from shoulder surgery, and his creative partner, Neil Meron, did as much as anyone in Hollywood to revive popular interest in musical theater.
Not only did they resuscitate the once-moribund movie musical with the 2002 hit "Chicago," which was at the time the first musical to win an Academy Award for best picture in more than three decades, they also brought musical theater to the masses with such live television productions as "The Sound of Music"
