Production Posse

A group of people that, whenever one is involved in a production, others are almost guaranteed to show up at some point.

This used to be a very enforced part of media making. Studios expected artists to specialize into units. An example would be John Ford being specialized in westerns, which meant that large parts of the crew—both in front of and behind the camera—would literally always work together.

See also Those Two Actors. When each member tends to play the same sort of role every time, they're a Universal Adaptor Cast. Associated Composer is a subtrope.


 * The Rat Pack.
 * The Brat Pack.
 * The Frat Pack. Established at the beginning of the 2000s with Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn appearing in comedies like Zoolander, Old School, Starsky and Hutch, Dodgeball and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. The latter brought attention to the likes of Steve Carell, Judd Apatow, Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen, who took up the mantle in these kinds of comedies when the original Frat Pack members started to become too expensive. And with 'Team Apatow' movies that grew from this, such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, Pineapple Express and Funny People, we often see Jonah Hill, Leslie Mann, Jason Bateman, and Gary Cole.
 * In fact, there's a whole stable of big time stars like Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell, supported by many actors (usually because of Second City connections) that could be from The Office, SNL, or The Daily Show. Judd Apatow probably plays behind the scenes.
 * Any movie produced or directed by Judd Apatow is almost guaranteed to have one or more of the following actors in it—Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, Bill Hader, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jason Segel, Leslie Mann (his wife) and, more recently, his daughter Maude Apatow.
 * The John Ford Stock Company.
 * Quentin Tarantino writes and directs all his movies. Lawrence Bender, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Michael Madsen, Harvey Keitel, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, and especially Samuel L. Jackson are never too far behind. All of his films were edited by the late Sally Menke, and from Kill Bill onward he's used Robert Richardson as his cinematographer. Whenever he wants to collaborate with another director, he usually turns to...
 * Robert Rodriguez. The man's regular stable of actors includes Mickey Rourke, Antonio Banderas, Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin, Rose McGowan, and he basically made Salma Hayek. As for crew? He is the crew.
 * Also, a lot of bit-parts and behind the scenes work involve members of his family, particularly his sons Rebel, Rocket and Racer, credited as consultants for the Spy Kids movies.
 * Christopher Guest movies all involve the same actors.
 * Wes Anderson et al. As described here, "The usual suspects in an Anderson production include, give or take a film, Owen and Luke Wilson, Schwartzman, Huston, Bill Murray and Indian actor Kumar Pallana, who has been in all of Anderson's films except The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou." He also usually has Robert Yeoman as cinematographer and Mark Mothersbaugh as the composer.
 * Actors in Joss Whedon projects have a tendency to reappear in his future projects. Crossover between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel was to be expected, since they exist in the same universe. But after Firefly was cancelled, no fewer than four of the main cast (Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, Gina Torres and Summer Glau) were given bit-parts in Buffy or Angel.
 * Then when Dollhouse hit the air it featured two of them (Alan Tudyk and Summer Glau again) in larger roles, along with ex-Angel actor Amy Acker, ex-Buffy/Angel actor Alexis Denisof, and of course an ex-Buffy/Angel actor in the lead (Eliza Dushku). Felicia Day had a bit part in both Buffy and Dollhouse; Christina Hendricks had bit parts in both Angel and Firefly.
 * Meanwhile, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog starred both Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day.
 * And to keep the pattern going, Whedon's feature film The Cabin in the Woods stars Amy Acker (again) and Fran Kranz (from Dollhouse), while Alexis Denisof (again) and Enver Gjokaj (from Dollhouse) show up in The Avengers. Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye in Avengers) previously had a bit part in Angel, and of course Chris Hemsworth (Thor in Avengers) was one of the leads in Cabin.
 * Besides Dushku, Glau and Denisof, there are four less-well-known actors (Jonathan Woodward, Jeff Ricketts, Bob Fimiani, Carlos Jacott) who have appeared in three of Whedon's four TV shows.
 * There's a handy table on Whedon's page on The Other Wiki showing which of his posse appeared in which of his projects.
 * This has now started to carry over to shows featuring former alumni who had worked on Buffy, as an episode of Grimm produced by David Greenwalt had Amy Acker (again!) as a guest star. And Tim Minear's short lived show Drive on FOX starred Nathan Fillion.
 * In the season one DVD of Dollhouse, there's a whole behind the scenes look at all the cast and crew who return to work with Joss for the show. He's pretty much got an entire production posse that doesn't just act, but also write, produce, shoot, etc.
 * In one further unusual take on this trope, an episode of Dollhouse was directed by John Cassaday, the artist from Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men.
 * Jason Reitman has put J.K. Simmons in all four of his movies
 * Whenever Adam Sandler and his Happy Madison production house are involved, expect any permutation of Rob Schneider, David Spade, and Nick Swardson to be somewhere among the cast members. Of his crew of actors, some are former SNL cast members from the early 1990's.
 * Sandler's recurring actors also have included Steve Buscemi, Peter Dante, and Allen Covert.
 * And with crew members, Sandler has Rupert Gregson-Williams as composer (he's also worked Teddy Castalucci several times), Perry Andelin Blake as production designer, Brooks Arthur as music supervisor and Jack Giarraputo as producer. He also has the Panavision Genesis used on all his projects after working with Dean Semler (one of the creators of the camera) on a pair of projects.
 * Also Chris Rock and Kevin James
 * Don't Forget Sandler's Personal Assistant Jonathan Loughran who appears in most of his movies.
 * The Kevin Smith gang include Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Jason Lee, himself, his wife and Jason Mewes. Of course, most of his movies took place on the same universe, which meant there were some actors playing multiple characters.
 * Not to mention Scott Mosier, Walt Flanagan, Bryan Johnson, Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Joey Lauren Adams, and Ethan Suplee. And behind the camera, Smith has sworn that after problems with Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Jersey Girl, he will never again work with a Director of Photography other than Dave Klein.
 * In addition, he has worked several times with George Carlin, Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan, Joey Lauren Adams, Guinevere Turner and Dwight Ewell.
 * Where Tim Burton is, Danny Elfman is sure to follow, and Johnny Depp will probably not be far behind. Softer members of the posse include current significant other (Lisa Marie and Helena Bonham Carter) and Paul Reubens. Christopher Lee or Christopher Walken (Or both) could also feature in there. Burton likes his horror vets.
 * In the early days, Michael Keaton filled the role that Depp fills now. Who else but Burton would've entrusted Batman to Beetlejuice?
 * Prior to that, Keaton was known as mostly a comedic actor, which meant news of his casting sent comic book fans in an uproar, fearing the movie would end up more like the campy Adam West Batman series than the Darker and Edgier comics of recent years.
 * Hayao Miyazaki always taps Joe Hisaishi to do the soundtracks for his movies
 * He also had a tendency in the 80's to cast Sumi Shimamoto for the lead roles in his films, but stopped that later on.
 * Say what? Darren Aronofsky is making a movie? Expect Clint Mansell to do the score, Matthew Libatique to be the cinematographer and Mark Margolis to appear in it.
 * When Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney got the idea to remake Ocean's Eleven, they went on to form a pretty tight A-List clique themselves. When a movie is directed, or at least produced by the two, it's pretty common to see Clooney, Matt Damon, or Brad Pitt starring opposite Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie or strangely enough, Cate Blanchett. Don Cheadle, David Strathairn, and Casey Affleck are commonly in supporting roles.
 * The Wachowskis have a stable of behind-the-scenes production folks that they use on pretty much every movie. Not so much for actors, but Hugo Weaving has started to become their go-to guy when they need a good actor.
 * And yet, somehow, he was nowhere to be seen in Speed Racer. Huh.
 * Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Joe Cornish.
 * A whole host of British (or in Dylan Moran's case, Irish) comedians are usually not very far behind.
 * Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding, Matt Berry, Rich Fulcher, Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness.
 * Any given Star Trek TV series is likely to share a significant portion of its crew with any other Star Trek series. Trek directors are especially likely to have started out as Trek actors. They also have a pool of actors that they like to pull from for recurring or one-shot characters, such that there are five actors who have played seven or more different Trek characters: Vaughn Armstrong (12 characters! 13, if you include that Mirror Universe character), Thomas Kopache (7), Jeffrey Combs (9), J.G. Hertzler (8), and Randy Oglesby (7). Joseph Ruskin's only got six, but he's got the distinction of having appeared in five Star Treks.
 * Relatedly, a pizza trophy for the late Majel Barrett, the First Lady of Star Trek, who (unless the 2009 pre-boot gets a Spin-Off of its own) will go down in history as the only person to be involved in all seven versions of the franchise (TOS Nurse Chapel and pilot episode's Number One; TAS Lt. M'ress; TNG & DS9 Lwaxana Troi; TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, and ST2K9 Computer Voice).
 * One suggested reason for this is that when you need a Rubber Forehead Alien, you've already got this guy's face-cast on file and you know he's fine with spending hours in makeup...
 * Star Trek: The Animated Series had a low budget that led to it using the main actors as guest actors, so James "Scotty" Doohan and the aforementioned Majel Barrett voiced almost every guest character across the series' run.
 * This happened even outside Star Trek. Gargoyles started with Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis as part of the main cast. By the end of the series, minor and recurring characters were voiced by Brent Spiner, Kate Mulgrew, Nichelle Nicols, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Avery Brooks, Colm Meaney, and some others.
 * And it happened again on 24. Former Star Trek: Enterprise showrunner Manny Coto joined their staff for Season 6; then Brannon Braga came onboard for Season 7. That same year they had Trip Tucker, Dr. Phlox and Worf's brother in various one- or two-shot guest roles (hapless dock guard, hapless scientist kidnapped by Tony and Sangalan tyrant General Juma, respectively). At least for Season 8 they branched out to some hotshot pilots...
 * Practically every Mitchell and Webb production includes Olivia Colman - best known as Sophie from Peep Show, which also stars Mitchell and Webb - and James Bachman.
 * See something made by Sam Raimi? Keep your eyes peeled for Bruce Campbell and Sam's own Oldsmobile Delta 88 (though don't hurt yourself looking for either in The Quick and the Dead)
 * And also Ted Raimi.
 * Older brother Ivan used to co-write a lot of his screenplays as well.
 * In a return to form, he was co-writer on Drag Me to Hell and what happens and is now working with Sam on Evil Dead IV.
 * He's also cast Lucy Lawless in three different series now: Hercules and Xena (as Xena) and Spartacus; Blood and Sand. She also cameos in Spider Man.
 * And more often than not, Rob Tapert will handle producing duties.
 * Josh Becker, who grew up with Sam, Bruce and co. and made Super8 Films with them in their teens worked on The Evil Dead Trilogy and Xena and has used the aforementioned group in some capacity in all but one of his own Indie Films.
 * Joseph LoDuca has scored the Evil Dead trilogy and many TV series Raimi and Tapert produced (Hercules, Xena, Jack of All Trades, Cleopatra 2525 and Legend of the Seeker).
 * The Coen Brothers usually draw from the same posse of actors, such as John Goodman, Frances McDormad (Joel's wife), Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, George Clooney, John Turturro, Jon Polito and Billy Bob Thornton. And again Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell tends to show up in small parts. They also gave Jeff Bridges both of his signature roles, a decade apart, each time casting against his established type and each time establishing him a new type. No Country for Old Men and especially A Serious Man are notable for drawing almost their entire casts from actors the audience are less likely to recognise.
 * Carter Burwell and/or T Bone Burnett have done all their scores.
 * Roger Deakins has done cinematography on every Coen film since Miller's Crossing other than Burn After Reading. Before that it was Barry Sodenfield for the first three films.
 * Many movies directed by Blake Edwards have soundtracks by Henry Mancini.
 * Monty Python members are known to appear in each others' movies, and in the works of Python-animator-turned-movie director Terry Gilliam. Jabberwocky, Brazil, Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen come to mind.
 * Steven Spielberg has his Associated Composer in John Williams. He also uses the same editor (Michael Kahn), in all since Close Encounters except ET the Extraterrestrial, and has the same cinematographer (Janusz Kamiński) since Schindler's List.
 * Robert Zemeckis often casts Tom Hanks, who he first worked with on Forrest Gump. Zemeckis has declared that Hanks is his "favorite actor" and that "there hasn't been a single situation where we didn't see eye to eye. Not one." In the olden days, he frequently found parts, however minor, for Marc McClure and Wendie Jo Sperber, who were among the leads of his first professional film I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Yes, they're Marty's brother and sister in Back to The Future. Alan Silvestri has scored every Zemeckis film since Romancing the Stone. He worked with cinematographer Dean Cundey from Romancing the Stone to Death Becomes Her and from there had Don Burgess as his DP from Forrest Gump up to Cast Away'', after which he went to performance capture.
 * Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Raise the Red Lantern) worked for a long time with acclaimed actress Gong Li. Unfortunately, they broke up, and now he's adopted Ziyi Zhang (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) as a muse instead.
 * John Woo used to work with Chow Yun-Fat a lot back in his Hong Kong days. About the only big Heroic Bloodshed movie he made in Hong Kong that didn't feature him was Bullet in the Head.
 * Movies featuring John Cusack will usually feature other Cusacks, as well as Jeremy Piven, a longtime friend.
 * In the early George Lucas days, it was rare that his films didn't include Harrison Ford.
 * Something that Lucas was apparently keen to avert. He originally didn't want to cast Ford in Star Wars, having originally only brought him in to read lines for others auditioning.
 * The same is true with Indiana Jones. Lucas' first choice for the role was Tom Selleck. Lucas has gone on record saying he doesn't like casting the same actors twice; Harrison Ford is just an exception because he was so perfect for the roles that ended up making him famous.
 * Mel Brooks' movies were known for having Dom De Luise, Harvey Korman, Dick Van Patten, Gene Wilder, and Madeline Kahn, among others (for instance, Liam Dunn appeared in at least two of Brooks' movies).
 * John Waters regularly featured Divine, Edith Massey, and Mink Stole in many of his works.
 * Something less official. Nowadays, if there's a work directed by J.J. Abrams, there's secondarily Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman as writers and Michael Giacchino as the score composer.
 * He tried to give Greg Grunberg (Parkman from Heroes) a role in every project he did for a while, whether it was major or just a cameo like Lost (his cameo in Star Trek is voice only). He's lessened this over time.
 * There is a lot of osmosis between Full House, Step by Step, and Family Matters; they had the same producers and the same lead vocalist for their theme songs.
 * If it's a Pixar feature film, John Ratzenberger will have a voice role in it. And expect music by either Michael Giacchino, Randy Newman, or Randy's cousin Thomas Newman.
 * When Pixar's John Lasseter supervised the dub of Spirited Away, he even brought over Ratzenberger as a participant due to his "good luck charm" status.
 * Joe Ranft did voices too, until his death.
 * Pixar Animation Studios is one of the most close-knit group of artists in history: John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Joe Ranft, Lee Unkrich, Bob Peterson and Brad Bird. Most of them were students together at Cal Arts in the late 70s. Each of the filmmakers display their unique vision, but all the filmmakers pitch in on each other's work during the process, no egos involved, for the purpose of creating the most entertaining and the most meaningful movies they possibly can.
 * Ron Howard and his brother Clint.
 * Any movie directed by Akira Kurosawa in the '50s and '60s could be expected to feature some combination of Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, and Minoru Chiaki. (Tatsuya Nakadai took Mifune's place in Kurosawa's later films, after Mifune and Kurosawa had a falling out in the mid '60s.) Part of this was the Toho studio system and Japan's relatively small pool of actors after World War II, but after a while Kurosawa started writing parts specifically for Mifune and Shimura.
 * Don't be surprised if you see Michael Biehn or Bill Paxton turn up in a James Cameron movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not uncommon to star (at least before he became The Governator). You'll probably find Lance Henriksen in it or possibly Sigourney Weaver. The score is most likely either done by Brad Fiedel or James Horner.
 * John Carpenter's famous collaboration with Kurt Russell, in Escape from New York, The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China. For the rest of the crew? He wrote, directed and often scored his own movies. Robert Rodriguez cited him as his major inspiration in that part. He even played the scores from Escape from New York and The Thing during the shoot of Planet Terror.
 * John Carpenter has also repeatedly worked with Adrienne Barbeau (and was also married to her at one point), Keith David and Donald Pleasence.
 * In his early days he often collaborated with Debra Hill as writer/producer, Tommy Lee Wallace as production designer/editor and Nick Castle as a writer (he also played the original Michael Myers) and all his movies from Halloween to Big Trouble in Little China (minus Starman and Christine) and from then he's used Gary B. Kibbe on all except for Memories Of An Invisible Man.
 * If a movie is directed by Colin Nutley, Helena Bergström (his wife) almost invariably plays the female lead.
 * Akiyuki Shinbo, the director for all of Studio Shaft's works, has a selection of voice actors that pop up time and time again. Hiroshi Kamiya, Chiwa Saitou and Miyuki Sawashiro are the ones most likely to show up.
 * Martin Scorsese and his go-to guys Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Joe Pesci, Frank Vincent, and these days, Leonardo DiCaprio. The editor of all of his movies since Raging Bull is Thelma Schoonmaker.
 * Guy Ritchie and his frequent producer (and now a director himself) Mathew Vaughn often use the same group of actors. Dexter Fletcher and Jason Flemyng have appeared in nearly every film either of them have done.
 * When Judd Apatow switched from TV to movies, he obviously kept the section of his old Rolodex with the "freaks" from Freaks And Geeks.
 * Not exactly true. Seth Rogen, James Franco and Jason Segel appear have appeared a few times in his movies but Linda Cardellini and Busy Phillips don't ever seem to appear. Also, Martin Starr (one of the "geeks") appeared in two Apatow films.
 * Want to know who's going to star in Dan Schneider's next series? Look to the recurring guest stars of the current one.
 * Guillermo del Toro movies tend to have Ron Perlman, Luke Goss, and/or Doug Jones; Hellboy II featured all three of them in notable roles. The cinematography is usually done by Guillermo Navarro and Marco Beltrami scores most of his films.
 * Rob Zombie often uses the same actors in many of his films; usually the actors from one film will show up in the next. His wife, Sheri Moon, is in everything he's done.
 * Two well-known ones in Hong Kong cinema:
 * The "Seven Little Fortunes", a subset of which are the "Three Brothers" - Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung (Martial Law), and Yuen Biao, and Yuen Wo-Ping (martial arts director for The Matrix and others), Yuen Wah and Yuen Qiu (Kung Fu Hustle) which started out as a Chinese opera troupe but gradually moved on to movies in the 70s, essentially defining Hongkong action cinema.
 * They have a Spiritual Successor in a new "Brat Pack" of sorts, a stable of young talents including Edison Chen, Shawn Yue, Stephen Fung, Nicholas Tse, Cecilia Chung, Joey Yung, Gillian Chung and Charlene Choi (the last two even record albums under the name Twins). Sadly these kids are better known nowadays for Edison's scandal, wherein the people repairing his laptop went the extra mile to upload his Porn Stash on the internet - which included nude pics of some of the ladies.
 * Ed Wood and his posse: Dolores Fuller, Tor Johnson, Bela Lugosi, The Amazing Criswell, Bunny Breckinridge, Conrad Brooks, etc.
 * Kenneth Branagh films are likely to feature appearances by Brian Blessed, Richard Briers, Geraldine Mac Ewan, Michael Maloney, and sometimes Derek Jacobi. Before Branagh and Emma Thompson divorced in 1995, she also played major roles in most of his films. Patrick Doyle usually does the music.
 * Spike Lee has a particularly large one. Members of it include his sister, and are all listed on his page on The Other Wiki. He also reuses crew members, such as cinematographer Ernest Dickerson.
 * Let's not forget the work of the "Black Pack" from the late 80's and mid 90's (Eddie Murphy, Robert Townsend, Arsenio Hall, Paul Mooney and Keenen Ivory Wayans).
 * All of David Cronenberg's films since The Brood (except for The Dead Zone) are scored by Howard Shore and he has worked with cinematographer Peter Suschitzky on all of his films. Robert Silverman often shows up in a smaller role. Viggo Mortensen and Jeremy Irons are also frequent collaborators with him.
 * Saturday Night Live alumni tend to work together a lot, usually members of the same cast, however it has been cross-generational as well.
 * Bill Murray, and Chevy Chase in Caddyshack. (The only time they've been in the same thing outside of SNL.)
 * Murray and Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters which was also originally to star John Belushi and Eddie Murphy as well
 * Aykroyd and Murphy in Trading Places
 * Belushi and Aykroyd in Blues Brothers
 * Aykroyd and Chase in Spies Like Us
 * Murphy and Mike Myers in Shrek
 * Tina Fey and Amy Poehler turn up together a lot.
 * Their respective Sitcoms, Thirty Rock and Parks and Recreation, have featured their former SNL colleagues as Special Guests. Will Forte and Fred Armisen have appeared on both shows. Ironically, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have not themselves appeared on each other's shows.
 * While Fey has not appeared on Parks and Recreation, Amy Poehler has since appeared on a live episode of 30 Rock as a young Liz Lemon.
 * Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Farley, Chris Rock, Rob Schnieder and Kevin Nealon, in any combination, can be found in a lot of films.
 * Sandler's Happy Madison production company is behind Spade's Rules of Engagement, though Sandler has no credited involvement. In a What Could Have Been, a Sandler-executive produced pilot starring Norm MacDonald and Jon Lovitz was also produced.
 * Dennis Miller has also been known to collaborate with his SNL co-stars. MacDonald appeared frequently on Dennis Miller Live and his current radio show.
 * Christopher Nolan has a noticable tendency to cast the same actors in different films. Michael Caine has appeared in his last 4 films. Christian Bale, Cillian Murphy, and Ken Watanabe have also had recurring roles. Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt appear to be the newest members; after Inception, all three have roles in the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises.
 * He does screenwriting with his brother Jonathan, his wife Emma Thomas will usually be producing, Wally Pfister will be doing cinematography, Lee Smith will be editing, either David Julyan or Hans Zimmer will be writing the score, and Chris Corbould will be on special effects.
 * If Tony Scott's making a new movie, then chances are Denzel Washington's not far behind. See Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, Deja Vu, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and Unstoppable. Denzel also starred in American Gangster, made by Tony's brother Ridley Scott.
 * Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, The Princess Diaries) always includes a role for Hector Elizondo.
 * Ever since Gladiator, Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe frequently reunite.
 * If Robert Altman is directing a movie, Shelley Duvall, Lily Tomlin and/or Diane Lane can't be too far behind.
 * Ditto Hal Needham and Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise and/or Jerry Reed.
 * BBS Productions in the late 60s and early 70s. For every film made by the company (with the exception of The Last Picture Show), the producer, director, writer and lead actor jobs were always filled by some combination of Bob Rafelson, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper and Henry Jaglom.
 * Toronto-based Nelvana Studio is prone to using the same actors and actresses in its productions, be they live-action or animation. Common talent includes/included Alyson Court, Tara Strong, Sunny Besen-Thrasher, Michael Fantini, Hadley Kay, Jim Henshaw, Billie Richards, and Cree Summer, among many, many others.
 * Many animation studios often had their own stock company of voice actors. Hanna-Barbera's productions usually had Daws Butler, Don Messick, John Stephenson, Janet Waldo, and Frank Welker among its regulars.
 * FUNimation, while huge, always ALWAYS uses voice actors for the lead roles who had appeared in their previous titles. They do look for new meat, but anime dubbing is so specialized that they really have no choice to cast the same people for the lead roles. Their actors also direct, write, line produce, and sound mix their dubs!
 * Filmation productions often noticably featured characters voiced by Lou Schiemer, one of the company's co-founders, although he was usually either uncredited, or went by the name "Erik Gunden". Other regulars included Lou's daughter Erika Schiemer, Jane Webb, John Erwin, Melendy Britt, Linda Gary, and the late George DiCenzo.
 * During much of the 1980s, DIC tended to have Bettina (the title character in all of their Rainbow Brite productions), Scott Menville, Cree Summer, Danny Mann, Danny Wells, Jeannie Elias, character actress Marilyn Lightstone, and various other Canadian talents who also recorded voices for the aforementioned Nelvana.
 * Ingmar Bergman frequently worked with the "repertory company" of Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullman and others, and almost always worked with cinematographer Sven Nykvist.
 * Koichi Mashimo frequently works with favorite seiyus Miyu Irino, Aya Hisakawa, Maaya Sakamoto among others. Musically he frequents the group Ali Project, and Yuki Kajiura. Also has his favorite screenwriters. In addition he always goes to the same studio for the art direction and in-betweening and completion work of his anime.
 * William Shakespeare had a stock company which included Richard Burbage (who generally played the leads) and Will Kemp (who played the comic roles). This is lampshaded in Hamlet where the actor playing Polonius is the same actor who originally played Julius Caesar (and therefore got stabbed again by Richard Burbage who played both Hamlet and Brutus).
 * During the 70s Mexican TV producer Roberto Gomez Bolaños (AKA: "Chespirito") used the same pool of actors on all of his shows, usually playing similar characters. This was particularly noticeable on El Chapulin Colorado, which only had one regular character (El Chapulin, played by Bolaños himself) since any other characters in the show where played by actors from his other hit show, El Chavo del Ocho (where they played regular characters.) They consisted of some combination of himself, Carlos Villagrán, Ramón Valdez, Florinda Meza, María Antonieta de las Nieves, Edgar Vivar, Ruben Aguirre, and (occasionally) his younger brother Horacio Gomez Bolaños.
 * Don Bluth was always followed by Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, and the three had left Disney at the same time to start Bluth's independent animation studio. Among the actors normally cast, Dom De Luise was a regular, with Will Ryan not to far behind.
 * A Disney Channel Original Movie made these days will likely freature one, or more, or several stars from the channel's original series, and maybe similar directors or writers.
 * Likewise, many of the Disney Channel's stars from a six or seven year period started as special guests in the period previous to it. Shows premiering around 2010 or 2011 (Shake It Up, A.N.T. Farm, Good Luck Charlie) largely star actors and actresses who had a guest role on Hannah Montana and/or Wizards of Waverly Place beforehand.
 * Selena Gomez started on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and Hannah Montana prior to Wizards of Waverly Place. Before that, she was in a pilot for a Lizzie McGuire spioff that never caught on.
 * Miley Cyrus seems to the exception. Aside from a non-speaking Cameo in High School Musical 2, she never appeared in a Disney Channel Original Movie.
 * Every Matthew Vaugh movie has Jason Flemyng in it, is produced by Jane Goldman, probably has Dexter Fletcher, and there's a huge list of regular collaborators (including Guy Ritchie and Brad Pitt) at the other wiki
 * And until X Men First Class, a score by Ilan Eshkeri.
 * Otto Preminger:
 * Laura stars Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews became Preminger's favorite actors to cast at 20th Century-Fox. In the 1960s, Preminger brought them back for a minor role in one film each after their lives had deteriorated, Tierney in Advise and Consent and Andrews in In Harm's Way. Both those last two films also featured Burgess Meredith, who appeared in four other Preminger films.
 * Character actor Gregory Ratoff was a good friend of Preminger from his earliest days working at 20th Century-Fox, though Preminger only cast him occasionally.
 * More closely associated with Preminger than any actor was Saul Bass, who did promotional art and title sequences for Preminger after he went independent.
 * Director James Mangold almost always has Cathy Konrad as producer, Phedon Papamichael as cinematographer and Arianne Phillips as costume designer. He's never used the same composer twice though.
 * In the early 1990's, it wasn't uncommon to see a Roger Corman production with Phedon Papamichael, Janusz Kaminski, Mauro Fiore and Wally Pfister all in the camera crew (usually with Papamichael as the main cinematographer). All four have gone on to respectable careers in the cinematography field.
 * Dan Schneider in the Nick Verse (Nickeldoeon shows iCarly, Victorious, Drake and Josh and Zoey 101) has certain actors having 3 or 4 different characters in the same shared universe. The main force behind this is that Dan reuses favoured actors as well as finding his future lead stars by casting them in guest or less than starring roles whilst they are younger, for example, Miranda Cosgrove having iCarly built around her through her work as Megan on Drake and Josh, with Nathan Kress being recruited for the show because of a one-shot guess character named Toplin; Jennette McCurdy's character Sam is based on a one episode character she played in Zoey101. Victoria Dawn Justice who was in Zoey 101 and iCarly before Victorious which was built around her when Dan identified her as a future star years earlier when she was on Zoey 101.
 * Lucky Mc Kee usually seems to have Angela Bettis as one of his actors (and when Bettis made her directorial debut, Mc Kee was the lead actor).
 * Rob Thomas's Party Down features Adam Scott, Jane Lynch, Ken Marino, and Ryan Hanson all who appeared on Veronica Mars.
 * It also featured a ton of other Veronica Mars stars and guest stars in the first season and a few in the second including Enrico Colantoni, Jason Dohring, and Alona Tal.
 * Justin Lin almost always has Sung Kang in one of his films (this would likely explain why Kang is the only actor from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift to appear in future installments).
 * Virtually every movie that David Lean ever directed featured Alec Guinness in a key secondary role(Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations, Fagin in Olver Twist, Emir Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia, and quite a few others), with Guinness only starring in Bridge on the River Kwai. The two men had a falling out eventually and the next movie Lean made, in which he deliberately did not cast Guinness, was his first critical and financial failure since he began working with Guinness, and so for the rest of Lean's life Guinness always had a role in Lean's films, albeit increasingly smaller ones. The two men never became friends again but Lean still considered Guinness his 'good luck charm.'
 * Quite a few movies that Tyler Perry directs and/or produces will have himself in a lead role, and also will have Tasha Smith, David Mann and Tamela Mann (the latter two are husband and wife).
 * Before he left the Church of Happyology in 2010, Paul Haggis usually had Michael Pena as one of his actors and Mark Isham as his composer (the latter two are active members).
 * Stu is usually accompanied by his girlfriend Jeanine Kasun, as well as writers/historians Mark Evanier, Earl Kress, and Jerry Beck.
 * Clive Doig's puzzle-based Edutainment shows for The BBC generally featured one or more of Janet Ellis, Sylvester McCoy, Mark Speight, Phillip Fox and Wilf Lunn.
 * Makoto Shinkai has not been involved in any project that does not have the name of composer Tenmon in it.
 * A special award should go to Richard Elfman for this in Forbidden Zone; many of the characters are played by friends and family, including the film's accountant and the director's brother Danny, whose Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo play the Devil and his croneys.