Beware The Production Credit

There's always been a bit of controversy surrounding production credits, but it's a topic that bears revisiting as this weekend's Sanctum hits the market. The film has James Cameron's name plastered all over it, but it's pretty clear that he didn't have much to do with the story. The 3-D technology? It looks solid, he definitely must have lent a hand there. Still, though the The Producer's Guild has credit guidelines, none of the studios have ratified them yet, which leads to situations precisely like this, a mediocre film with a monster name attached.
We've seen this before, (See: Michael Bay, A Nightmare on Elm Street) but there's a larger point to make, and that's this: if the producer is the main draw, you're already in trouble. Because most eventual producers first make their names as directors, Quentin Tarantino comes to mind, but the projects they truly love they handle themselves. Of course, there are big name producers like Jerry Bruckheimer or Jon Peters who never get into directing, but you rarely see their name on the marketing materials. So if they ever say "From the guy who brought you Movie X!" and you don't know who that guy is ...then you can probably skip it and save yourself the heartache.