What Producers Do: Explaining The Social Network’s Social Network

Last night when The King’s Speech won an Oscar for Best Picture, you saw this big group of people bound on stage and three men — Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin — give their acceptance speeches. These were the producers of the movie. 

But what did they do to deserve that award? Indeed what do any producers do?

The Vulture has an informative article on the various producers of another Oscar nominated movie The Social Network. It shows how producers use a combination of control over content and connections to put a project together. Some excerpts:

Dana Brunetti: As president of Kevin Spacey’s production company, Trigger Street, Brunetti had first contact with its underlying source material, inasmuch as The Social Network can really be said to have been “based” on a book that was being written concurrently with its own screenplay.

Michael De Luca: Having adapted Mezrich’s 21 with Brunetti and Spacey for the screen, De Luca was a natural choice to reteam with them to produce a Facebook movie.

Scott Rudin: Around the same time, New York–based producer Scott Rudin was also mulling his own a movie about Facebook and had already lined up screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to write it.

Ceán Chaffin: Chaffin, in addition to serving as Fincher’s longtime line producer on movies dating back to 1997’s The Game, is also his live-in girlfriend; it was a given that in hiring Fincher, the studio would also be hiring Chaffin as the primary day-to-day producer, critical duties she quickly assumed.

There are all sorts of producers. Hopefully you’ll find some that respond to your script, believe in your talent, and fight like hell for your project.

For more of the article, go here.