PDC's beginnings lay with film pioneer William Wadsworth Hodkinson, founder of Paramount Pictures in 1912. In late 1924 Hodkinson sold one of his struggling distribution companies to Jeremiah Millbank, a "wealthy, extremely religious, and politically conservative financier."^[1] Millbank partnered with DeMille and renamed the company Producers Distributing Corporation. Part of Millbank's investment went to purchase the former Thomas H. Ince Culver Studios, the property whose main building is a replica of Mount Vernon.

In March 1927, the small Pathé Exchange studio and Producers Distributing Corporation merged under the control of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) chain of theaters. In early 1928, Joseph P. Kennedy, owner of the Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio, took control of KAO. Later in the year, RCA, in an effort led by general manager David Sarnoff to promote the new RCA Photophone sound-on-film system, acquired and merged KAO and FBO, creating RKO Radio Pictures. Kennedy retained control of Pathé, which had assumed PDC's assets, including the Culver City studio. In January 1931, he sold Pathé to RKO and left the film business.

PDC is unrelated to the company of the same name organized by Ben Judell in 1939, and which produced four films then evolved into the Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation. PDC is also unconnected to the Producers Distribution Agency founded in 2010 by John Sloss and Bart Walker.