Now, let’s talk about a MARKED Producer. This means the person applied for and was ultimately awarded the mark of p.g.a. in the credits next to their name by the Producers Guild of America. If you see p.g.a. after someone’s name, you know they did the vast majority of the producing work and played a significant role in the origination of the project.
1) They might have developed the project themselves from scratch or working with a writer.
2) They might have packaged it with all the key people (director, cast, writers, etc).
3) They might have found indie equity financing or pushed the project into production with a studio.
4) They might have been the first to acquire the IP.
This person controls the lifespan of a film with oversight from the film’s buyers (studio and/or financiers). They control all spending and the operations of physical production/post production, and negotiate all of the key deals related to the picture.
Usually, all of the production deals run through this person and they hold control over how the back-end points are distributed in the “Producer’s Pool” (for more on the topic of points, click here).
In a nutshell, the movie is this person’s baby. They develop it, own it, decide who becomes a part of it, build it from the ground up and then sell it. They may not play a significant role in how the film is ultimately released, but they decide which distributor will be releasing it in the first place.