i understand they direct the movie/show, but shouldnt the writers get the bulk of the credit? Anytime i hear about a big movie doing well or flopping the director is usually the topic.
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This has been a long-time issue for screenwriters.
The short version is that for many years, producers were seen as the closest thing to an “author” of a film, since they are the ones who literally put the entire production together, including hiring the director and screenwriter, and the producer has final say on all things (barring exceptions for contractual obligations).
Then, in the late-‘50s, a group of French critics and independent filmmakers who were disappointed with the bland commercial French film industry at the time put forward what has come to be known as the “auteur theory”. They felt the problem with cinema was its inherently collaborative nature and wanted to make it more like “traditional” art with a singular artist. So they proposed an alternative cinema organized around a singular authorial voice, in which the director (who has creative control on set) does *more* than just direct—they write and producer as well, and sometimes even edit or shoot the film—in order to have a singular “author” of the film.
Note this was essentially a manifesto for a new type of cinema, and not surprisingly, it came from independent filmmakers working outside the commercial industry on budgets small enough to allow them that kind of control. But they also wrote about American filmmakers who they saw as having a much stronger authorial voice than the average director—filmmakers like Hitchcock, Welles, John Ford, or Billy Wilder—as a model for what they were talking about.
But when those ideas were translated to English, written about by American critics, and picked up by young directors in film school, it got mangled into the more simplistic idea that “the director is the author.” Of course, this was very appealing to young directors.
And this idea got reinforced by two things:
(1) the Directors’ Guild’s requirement of a possessory credit: that credit in every film that says “a Quentin Tarantino film”, “a Christopher Nolan film”, or “a Spike Lee joint”—a credit literally saying that it’s the director’s film.
(2) the fact that the most famous and in-demand directors usually *also* produce their films, and sometimes write or co-write them as well (when you see directors accepting a Best Picture Oscar, it’s not because they directed it; it’s because they also produced it).
Screenwriters have long argued against the possessory credit, and for good reason. But the fact is that while they write the script, the director and producer are at liberty to change it as they see fit, which means that while the screenwriter is largely responsible for the story, they aren’t the final say on it.
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