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prakhar897

Payments to producers of the film looks like this:

MNight - 7.2M$ + 0.3M$ + 3M$

Sam Mercer - 850k$

Scott Rudin - 3M$

Aren't producers the one investing in the movie. Why are they getting paid then, How does this work?

Edit: Other expenses like travel etc are also covered by the company which adds another 1M$ approx [ex: 41.23]

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Producers aren't usually investors. Executive producers have more to do with investing, but not all executive producers invest (some recruit investors, or do other unrelated things). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_producer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_producer

Producer and executive producer are completely differet roles despite similar sounding names.

Executive producer is a credit for someone who have helped secure funding. Sometimes high-profile actors may have an executive producer credit.

Producer is like project manager for the movie.

AFAIK the executive producers gather funding and the producers actually make the movie.

I'm pretty sure the studio is putting up the money for the movie. This seems to be the production budget and does not include whatever his profit participation was.

Executive producers are investors.

Line producers are managers

Producers are ceos or presidents.

In reality, these lines are a lot blurrier. Executive producers usually are investors, but they're not necessarily the primary investors. Definitionally, they're responsible for the financing of the film. Producers on the other hand, are, in theory responsible for managing expenditure of the investment (making the film), very much like a CEO/President as you describe.

Not necessarily are producers involved in any budgeting. My First Wife and I were producers on a film that was made from a stage script of her. Our role as producers gave us vetoes on screenplay changes and gave us a hand in the production, plus royalties, but we had no hand in securing the budget or spending it.

Yeah, hence the "in theory". In practice, titles and roles are often weird on film sets. Don't even get me started on "associate producers"...

I would have thought producer is akin to a board of directors, and director is akin to CEO.

The director is responsible for what ends up on the screen, but not for ensuring the crew gets food.

The director is the person who actually crafts the movie. They don't necessarily have anything to do with managing the money. Sometimes you have producer-directors, but it's like a restaurant that is owned by the chef.

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