The Producers (1967)

The Producers is a 1967 American satirical black comedy film written and directed by Mel Brooks, and starring Gene Wilder, Zero Mostel, Dick Shawn, and Kenneth Mars. The film is about a mild-mannered accountant and a con artist theater producer who scheme to get rich by fraudulently overselling shares in a stage musical designed to fail. To this end, they find a playscript celebrating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and bring it to the stage. Because of this theme, The Producers was controversial from the start and received mixed reviews. It became a cult film, and found a more positive critical reception later.

The Producers was Brooks's directorial debut. For the film, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 1996, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and placed eleventh on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs list. It was later adapted by Brooks and Thomas Meehan as a stage musical, which itself was adapted into a film again in 2005.