How do movie producers earn their money?
 

After watching entourage season 1-7 (2 episodes) I was curious how a movie producer makes their money back on a film.
Let's a say a producer forwards 60mil, once the movie is finshed shooting, would a studio then offer to purchase the film for 60mil or more? Or does the money trickle in from advertising and time in the theater? How do they make it all work? http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ies/wacko1.gif
I'd love to get involved in that business [surrender]

Mel Gibson self produced Passion of the Christ since hollywood wanted nothing to do with it. Thus, gibson paid for everything, until the movie got a distributor... then he reaped the vast majority of the profits because it was all his, except what the distribution company got. This woulda been the case in the drug dealer movie in Entourage had they decided to distribute it themselves. They decided to sell it to a studio instead because they (people that mattered ari and e, knew it was crap).

Producers who have backing from a studio, are more like managers, as the money they are spending is the studios not theirs. Their job is to bring the movie in on budget. They are salaried but also get a cut of the films proceeds as a bonus to make a good film.

Considering how many films make a loss*, perhaps you wouldn't.
*With the book-keeping, tax breaks, credits, writeoffs, etc, even some successfull films can make a paper loss and provide a tax writeoff for 'investors'.
That's why you'll sometimes see directors suing producers or studios for what they believe their rightful share is - like Peter Jackson over the 'Ring movies.