Mel Brooks adapted his Broadway musical The Producers from his own 1968 movie of the same name. The film was only a modest success, but it did win the Academy Award for best original screenplay. Over the course of more than thirty years it became a cult classic, with legions of devoted fans who knew the script line-for-line. The musical, on the other hand, was a phenomenon from its beginning. At the 2001 Antoinette Perry ("Tony") Awards, it took twelve statues—the most ever won by any Broadway show. The show sold millions of dollars in tickets before it even opened and continued to sell tickets for dates years into the future. In the months after the destruction of the World Trade Center, when the entertainment world in New York City was devastated by huge financial losses due to audience uncertainty, the unstoppable popularity of The Producers is sometimes credited with saving Broadway.

The story concerns Max Bialystock, a washed-up Broadway producer, and Leo Bloom, a meek accountant who comes to do his books. When Bloom casually notes that a producer could make more money on a show that failed, because the show's investors would never have to be paid back, Bialystock thinks up a plan to gain them millions. They set about looking for the worst Broadway show imaginable, settling on Springtime for Hitler, A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden. They then enlist a flamboyant gay producer, assuming that he can make the show even more unbearable.

The Producers is populated with colorful characters and enlivened with witty songs filled with sly cultural references. It also relies heavily on crass and obvious stereotypes meant to offend all equally, with mincing gays, sex-object women, greedy Jews, bubble-headed Swedes, oversexed old ladies, gruff Irish cops, and kick lines of singing Nazis.