Trivia

Filmmakers Des Doyle and Ryan Patrick McGuffey have said that they had almost given up on getting Joss Whedon in the film after trying for a year to reach him. Then one morning after leaving a meeting with Bad Robot they literally ran into him in the parking lot and pitched him then and there. Incredibly he agreed to take part. However when they filmed his interview approx 2 months later (on the Monday morning after The Avengers opening weekend) they had literally just 1 hour to shoot before Joss was leaving for his first vacation in 2 years. Just as filming commenced workers started cutting down a large tree outside which lead to a traffic jam. Doyle was terrified that the sound from the interview would be unusable but had to proceed anyway. Remarkably the Sound Post-Production team in Dublin were able to remove all of the distracting background noise allowing the filmmakers to use Joss' interview.

The film took 4 years to make - starting in September 2010 with principal photography completed in November 2012. With over 100 hours of footage shot it took the filmmakers a year to edit the film and then almost another year to complete all the clearances and releases required. As the film features so many Showrunners who have worked on a large number of different TV series over the years legal work involved dealing with almost every Studio, Network and Production Company in Hollywood. This massive task was undertaken by Director Des Doyle, Producer John Wallace and Clearance Co-Ordinator Julie Ryan.

Showrunners has achieved a number of notable firsts for an Irish film. It is the first to ever be screened at both San Diego Comic Con and New York Comic Con and also the first ever to have had panels at both those events. It is also the first ever feature documentary to have been screened by the Television Academy Of America and was in fact the final screening to ever take place at the Academy's prestigious Leonard H.Goldenson Theatre where it had it's LA Premiere on Tuesday the 28th of October 2014.