eli5 : What’s the job of Executive Producers on movies and TV series? How much to they contribute to the overall finished product and what differentiates them from regular producers?
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The executive producer is the top role on a TV series.
They supervise other producer roles (supervising producer, producer, co-producer, associate producer, line producer, production managers, production designers, production assistants, etc.) as well as writers, directors, casting, actors, and other crew leads. They are ultimately responsible for the budget, the schedule, and all the creative content — although a lot of that responsibility is delegated to their teams.
Sometimes there may be multiple executive producers. The one with the majority of the day-to-day responsibility is usually called the “showrunner,” which is not a formal title but used to designate who is *really* in charge. Sometimes the “executive producer” title is given to star actors or others who might not actually be doing the same level of day-to-day production work, so the showrunner is the “lead executive producer” that gets to boss around other people who may have been giving the “executive producer” credit as a reward and importance, not because of their daily responsibilities.
Increasingly, in modern television, the lead writer of the series (who frequently is also the creator of the series) is the showrunner / lead executive producer.
The above applies to US television productions. The titles and management structure is different in the UK and probably in other countries as well.
The “executive producer” title is different in film than it is in TV. In film, the executive producer has much less day-to-day involvement in the production, and the film’s director is usually the top person once production gets under way. In film, the people with executive producer title are sometimes just the people who fronted the money to make the film and have no further involvement.
But sometimes executive producers might be involved in the *pre*-production creative process — hiring directors, casting, etc. — because they are safeguarding their investment. This is especially true with directors/writers who also are executive producers on films that they *don’t* direct/write.
E.g. Steven Spielberg has been an executive producer on films like the Back To The Future series (directed by Robert Zemeckis), the Transformers series (directed by Michael Bay), the Men In Black series (directed by Barry Sonnenfeld), etc. Spielberg is putting up money for those films through his Amblin Entertainment production company … but if Spielberg *also* wants to provide input into scripts, casting, production design, etc. *in addition to* his bags of money, you can bet the rest of the production team is going to listen to that input. Because, you know: the *highest grossing director in history* wants to give you feedback, you *listen*.
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