Who wrote and directed the 1967 comedy The Producers?

Mel Brooks wrote and directed the 1967 comedy The Producers. It was Brooks’s feature-film directorial debut and earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

The film follows Max Bialystock, a dishonest Broadway producer, and Leo Bloom, a nervous accountant. They devise a scheme to raise more money from investors than a failed musical could possibly return, intending to keep the surplus after the show closes. Their chosen production, Springtime for Hitler, becomes the deliberately outrageous play-within-the-film.

The comedy was controversial because it used Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany as the subject of a musical farce, and early reviews were sharply divided. Over time, however, the film became a cult favorite and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1996. Zero Mostel played Bialystock and Gene Wilder played Bloom. The 1967 original should also be distinguished from the 2005 musical film adaptation, which Brooks produced but did not direct.