Producers roles vary wildly depending on the movie

>>103851
Really? Huh, are there any examples of producers that have made a major impact on production?

>>103852
Well, on paper producers are supposed to oversee the entire production, from concept to script-writing to the hires.
Mervin LeRoy for example basically put together the concept and staff of Wizard of Oz.

"LeRoy had long desired to adapt the Frank Baum books to film and reminisced that "the dream remained merely a dream until I found myself at M-G-M and Louis B. Mayer asked me what I wanted to make." "The Wizard of Oz," I said.
He didn't look pained or upset or anything. "Okay," he said. "Do it.""

"The preparations were enormous. Nothing like it had ever been done before…[art directors] Cedric Gibbons [and] William A. Horning built a model of the set that was one-fourth life size...it took months to finish that alone, and some of the statistics boggle the mind...when the full set was built it covered 25 acres of the studio backlot...we had 65 different sets in the picture, and each of them was concocted out of whole cloth and hard work."

I think the figurehead you're thinking of is the "executive producer".

I think producer and director have different meanings when it comes to anime vs western cinema. Since the producer is putting together a team to act out a production that the producer sees, he's effectively the boss.
But in anime or TV it's more around the head director who is overseeing animation directors and other sub-directors. Sometimes the episode director has say over others.

also when it comes to series, I think of the producer as being more oriented with the financial and buisness sides of things. They don't want to worry about how it all is going, but they want deadlines to be met so the show can go on another week.

Eizonken being the characterizations of these distinctions... left to right.. the actor, the producer, the director