Max Bialystock is a theatrical producer who sweet-talks rich old women to get them to invest in his Broadway plays. Then he meets Leo Bloom, who innocently realizes that if Max were to get a lot of money to invest in play which was a guaranteed flop, that they would be rich. The two then proceed to find the worst play ever written, obtain a large number of investors, hire a lead actor and director with absolutely no talent, and then sit back to wait for the bad reviews. The plan is faultless, at least they think so…
Mel Brooks is bringing The Producers, one of the most honored musicals in the history of the American theater, to the motion picture screen as a sparkling, feature-length musical comedy. The record-breaking Tony Award-winning hit (based on Mel Brooks’ seminal 1968 motion picture comedy) received 15 nominations and won a record-breaking 12 awards, including Best Musical, Best Director and Choreographer, and Best Actor.
Step One: You start with Broadway’s smash hit The Producers — The New Mel Brooks Musical, winner of a record-breaking 12 Tony Awards, and based on Mel Brooks’ Oscar-winning 1968 film The Producers.
Step Two: You have two major film studios, Universal Pictures and Columbia Pictures, join forces to bring the musical play to the big screen.
Step Three: You enlist the phenomenal Susan Stroman, winner of five Tony Awards, including two for directing and choreographing The Producers — The New Mel Brooks Musical on Broadway, to make her motion picture directorial debut with the film version.
Step Four: You bring the original Tony Award-winning stars, Natlan Lane and Matthew Broderick, back to recreate their signature roles and surround them with two of Hollywood’s biggest talents, Academy Award nominee Uma Thurman and comic superstar Will Ferrell. And before you can say “Step Five,” you have the makings of the big, fun-filled, laugh-a-minute musical movie event audiences have been waiting for: The Producers.
Only one person in the world could have conceived of such a plan: the incomparable Mel Brooks, whose fabulous career comes full circle with this new film version of The Producers. Brooks was already a television veteran when he made his feature film directorial and writing debut with The Producers in 1968. The modestly budgeted comedy, starring Broadway favorite Zero Mostel and a newcomer named Gene Wilder, became a sleeper hit and earned Brooks an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
At the time, movie audiences were shocked at the sheer audacity of the film’s premise involving fading theatrical producer Max Bialystock (Mostel) and timid, neurotic accountant Leo Bloom (Wilder), who conspire to intentionally produce a Broadway flop in order to bilk the show’s backers out of millions of dollars. The film has since become a classic.
Fast forward to 2001, when Brooks, having spent 30 years creating such comic masterpieces as Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, Silent Movie and Spaceballs, became the toast of Broadway with his stage musical of The Producers — with an original score by Brooks, book by Brooks and Thomas Meenan (Annie, Hairspray) and choreography and direction by Susan Stroman (Contact, Crazy for You).
The show’s stars, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, both of whom had already scored successfully in movies and on Broadway in both plays and musicals — winning Tony Awards along the way — saw their careers soar to dazzling new heights in the career-defining roles of Bialystock and Bloom. The Producers was nominated for 14 Tony Awards and won 12, more than any other show in Broadway history. It received Tonys in each category it was nominated, including three for Brooks — for Best Musical, Best Score and Best Book of a Musical.
A few years later, when serious conversations started taking place about a film version of the musical, Brooks was adamant that as many as possible of the talents responsible for the success of the original Broadway production would return for the film version, including director / choreographer Stroman, stars Lane and Broderick, as well as Tony Award winner Gary Beach and Tony Award nominee Roger Bart, who, respectively, created the roles of the flamboyantly untalented director Roger DeBris and his common-law assistant Carmen Ghia.
However, there were a couple of opportunities for casting major talents who would be new to the project. The role of Ulla, Bialystock and Bloom’s luscious Swedish secretary / slash / receptionist, was the perfect showcase for an actress to demonstrate her skills at comedy, singing and dancing. Everyone agreed that Uma Thurman — red-hot from her roles in Kill Bill: Vols. I and II and Oscar-nominated for Pulp Fiction — could make the part her own. And to play the wildly demented Hitler-loving playwright, Franz Liebkind, none other than Hollywood’s top comic actor, Will Ferrell, was given the chance to broaden his range with the role of the singing and dancing Nazi.
With Brooks producing, along with his frequent associate Jonathan Sanger (The Elephant Man, Vanilla Sky), from a screenplay by Brooks and Meehan, the movie classic that became a Broadway sensation is now a comedy-musical movie event.
Two-time Tony Award winners Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick return to their celebrated roles as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, a scheming theatrical producer and his mousy CPA who hit upon the perfect plan to embezzle a fortune: raise far more money than you need to produce a sure-fire Broadway flop and then (since no one will expect anything back), Max and Leo can pocket the difference. To do this, they need the ultimate bad play, which they find in the musical Springtime for Hitler.
Their plans come to naught and the duo are taken completely by surprise when their new production is hailed as a toast-of-the-town hit. Uma Thurman stars as Ulla, the Swedish secretary / slash / receptionist and would-be showgirl, and Will Ferrell brings his spot-on comic talents to the role of Franz Liebkind, the neo-Nazi playwright (and pigeon fancier) responsible for penning the “worst play ever written.”
These production notes provided by Universal Pictures.
The Producers
Starring: Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Roger Bart, Gary Beach, Uma Thurman
Directed by: Susan Stroman
Screenplay: Mel Brooks, Thomas Meehan
Release Date: December, 2005 (Limited), January 13, 2006 (Wide)
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual humor and references.
Studio: Universal Pictures
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $19,398,532 (51.0%)
Foreign: $18,659,803 (49.0%)
Total: $38,058,335 (Worldwide)