When I watch a show or big budget movie I’ll see half a dozen ‘executive producers’, buncha ‘producers’, tons of ‘co-producers’. Just so many sometimes. What are their roles? Is it merely an investment? Or are they doing movie related things too?
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In terms of what the different versions of the ‘producer’ titles mean:
The ‘showrunner’ is the lead producer on a television series. They’re involved in many of the day-to-day operations of a TV show or movie: budgeting, casting, hiring crew, ensuring that the show stays visually consistent and continuity is maintained, and ensuring that everyone has the resources they need to do their jobs. Usually, when someone says ‘we don’t have the budget for that fancy visual effect’ or ‘this is a *kid’s show*! *No*, you can’t explode that guy into bloody chunks!’, that somebody will be the showrunner.
An ‘executive producer’ is usually not *directly* involved with day-to-day operations; as the title implies, they’re most often at the studio level, making sure that the high-level hiring-and-firing decisions are made; if they don’t think the showrunner is getting the job done, the executive producer will have Words with them. Since they’re basically studio executives, an executive producer often oversees more than one production at a time.
Co-producers are, as the title suggests, producers that have paired with one another for various reasons. Maybe they don’t individually have the full confidence of the studio, maybe they’re co-producing because they developed the show together, or maybe they individually just don’t have the resources to put the show together on their own.
In general terms, though, sometimes a ‘producer’ credit is given as a gift to a close friend or mentor, or as a kind gesture to ‘bump up’ someone’s career a bit (‘producer’ is a fairly prestigious title, after all, even if you didn’t actually *do* anything).
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