*** Welcome to piglix ***

The Producers (1967 film)

The Producers
The Producers (1968).jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Mel Brooks
Produced by Sidney Glazier
Written by Mel Brooks
Starring
Music by John Morris
Cinematography Joseph Coffey
Edited by Ralph Rosenblum
Distributed by Embassy Pictures
Release date
  • November 22, 1967 (1967-11-22)
Running time
88 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $941,000
Box office $1.6 million (Rentals)

The Producers is a 1967 American satirical comedy film written and directed by Mel Brooks and starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn, and Kenneth Mars. The film was Brooks's directorial debut, and he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Decades later, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry and placed eleventh on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs list. It was later remade by Brooks as the acclaimed Broadway stage musical The Producers, which itself was adapted into the film also called The Producers starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

The once-great Max Bialystock (Mostel) had once been the toast of Broadway, but now he has been reduced to a washed-up, aging, fraudulent, corruptible, and greedy Broadway producer who barely ekes out a hand-to-mouth existence romancing lascivious, wealthy elderly women ("angels" in theatrical terms) in exchange for money for his next play. Accountant Leopold "Leo" Bloom (Wilder), a young man who is highly nervous and prone to hysterics, arrives at Max's office to do his books and discovers a $2,000 discrepancy in the accounts of Max's last play. Max persuades Leo to hide the relatively minor fraud, and while shuffling numbers, Leo has a revelation: a producer could make a lot more money with a flop than a hit by overselling shares in the production, because no one will audit the books of a play presumed to have lost money. Max immediately puts this scheme into action. They will oversell shares on a massive scale and produce a play that will close on opening night, thus avoiding payouts and leaving the duo free to flee to Rio de Janeiro with the profits. Leo is afraid such a criminal venture will fail and they will go to prison, but Max eventually convinces him that his drab existence is no better than prison.


...
Wikipedia

...