The actor and director Fred Savage is a lifelong watch collector, the sort of enthusiast who frequents watch auctions in his spare time. So when he was working as an executive producer and director on “The Wonder Years,” the recent ABC reboot of the classic coming-of-age show in which he starred in the 1980s, he wanted the characters to wear watches authentic to the series’s 1960s setting. For that he turned to his friend Eric Wind, a former senior watch specialist at Christie’s and now an independent watch dealer in Palm Beach, Fla.

Mr....

The actor and director Fred Savage is a lifelong watch collector, the sort of enthusiast who frequents watch auctions in his spare time. So when he was working as an executive producer and director on “The Wonder Years,” the recent ABC reboot of the classic coming-of-age show in which he starred in the 1980s, he wanted the characters to wear watches authentic to the series’s 1960s setting. For that he turned to his friend Eric Wind, a former senior watch specialist at Christie’s and now an independent watch dealer in Palm Beach, Fla.

Mr. Wind primarily peddles rare Rolex and Patek Philippe watches to private collectors, but in recent years, he’s carved out a niche facilitating watch loans for movies and TV shows including “Crazy Rich Asians” and FX’s “The Premise”—a key player in a subculture that fixates on the intersection between horology and pop-culture and has ripple effects for watch marketing, watch blogs and watch collectors.  

Mr. Wind’s role is an uncommon one in Hollywood—many shows and movies use replica watches, not real timepieces. Tight film budgets typically preclude outright purchasing a handful of $50,000 Chopards, while borrowing, say, a genuine Rolex or Audemars Piguet requires producers to take out a hefty insurance policy and sometimes hire a security guard—all for an item that occupies a sliver of the screen for a matter of seconds. (To secure bona fide watches, productions do occasionally strike deals directly with brands, making them official timepiece providers for a film—the most famous example being the James Bond franchise’s association with Omega.)

It is often easier just to use far less valuable prop watches. In Adam McKay’s recent apocalyptic comedy “Don’t Look Up,” for example, the actor Jonah Hill wears a prop Richard Mille RM52-01 Skull Tourbillon watch. A genuine model retails around $600,000, and as the movie’s costume designer Susan Matheson told GQ.com, there were concerns that such a pricey watch might get swiped from the set. Hence the decision to use a fake instead (one that provoked watch fans to write blog posts about how chintzy and obviously counterfeit it appeared). 

Many watch geeks noted that the Richard Mille watch worn by Jonah Hill’s character in ‘Don’t Look Up’ was a clear counterfeit.

Photo: NETFLIX

“Don’t Look Up” is hardly the only production to cut horological corners. A supposedly box-fresh, roughly $15,000 Patek Philippe watch that was featured in the pilot of HBO’s “Succession” was actually a duplicate. In one of that series’s more recent episodes, when would-be corporate power usurper Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) received a different watch as a birthday present, the showrunners used an even more economical trick: They didn’t show the watch’s face on screen at all. (Other times, the show’s prop team does source genuine luxury timepieces from Manhattan watch showrooms.)

According to Mr. Wind, however, some showrunners, directors and even actors are themselves watch hoarders who will go to great lengths to ensure the watches filmed are both distinctive and accurate. For the 2018 film adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s book “Crazy Rich Asians,” the author (a client of Mr. Wind) asked him to locate a watch for a pivotal scene, where the audience would clearly be able to see the timepiece. In an email to Mr. Wind, Mr. Kwan wrote that he needed a model “that will really impress watch collectors.” Mr. Wind tracked down a collector in Singapore with a “Paul Newman” Rolex Daytona (a similar model has sold for $17.8 million) who was willing to part with the watch for a few days. The production paid for the watch to be flown from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur for the shoot and handled the details of the insurance policy.

More recently, the actor Daniel Dae Kim, who appears in the FX anthology show “The Premise” (and is another client) asked Mr. Wind to provide a few watches to be worn in the series. (Mr. Kim had the blessing of the production to reach out.)  At his own expense, Mr. Wind flew to New Orleans, where the show was shooting, to deliver the loaners. Mr. Wind’s side gig is far from lucrative: He is not paid for the time he invests in arranging watch loans. He even sometimes loses money facilitating them and at times has to assume the liability for the watches himself. But, as Mr. Wind sees it, getting accurate watches into movies “helps promote watches and watch culture.” It is also good for networking and his professional profile. In the course of coordinating loans for “The Premise,” he got to meet the showrunner BJ Novak.

To assist on “The Wonder Years,” Mr. Wind factored in the likely 1960s-era salaries of the show’s college-professor father and accountant mother and typed up a dossier that recommended appropriately affordable, period-accurate watches that he could source and loan to the show. The depth of thought that Mr. Wind put into the consultation impressed executive producer Mr. Savage who, together with the series’s showrunner, Saladin K. Patterson, and stars Dulé Hill and Saycon Sengbloh, made the final watch selection. If you pay close attention to your screen, you can spot the Jaeger-LeCoultre and Cartier watches on the actors’ wrists. “When you’re putting together a show, there is so much care and energy goes into these fine little details that help tell the story about who the character is,” said Mr. Savage. “Every time I catch a glimpse of [the watches] on camera, I get excited.”

On ‘Succession,’ the cast wear a blend of real luxury watches sourced from Manhattan showrooms and prop timepieces.

Photo: HBO

Watch fans also get excited about on-screen watches. In a cottage industry dedicated to “watch spotting,” horologically focused websites like Hodinkee and Time+Tide frequently round up timepieces from shows and movies. Craig Karger, a lawyer in New York, runs the blog WristEnthusiast.com in his spare time, writing pieces that are among the site’s most-read about the watches worn on shows and movies such as “Entourage,” “The Office” and in the “Fast and Furious” franchise. His articles on the timepieces of “Succession” have proven a particular draw. Every Sunday night when the series was airing Mr. Karger would see “a huge boost of traffic” to the site from people searching “Succession watches.”

For brands, having their watches worn on screen can be a marketing win. When a watch is associated with a movie or show, “it [gets] a story and people want to have a story with the product,” said Vivian Stauffer, the CEO of Swiss watchmaker Hamilton, whose watches have been worn on screen in hundreds of movies, dating back to 1932’s  “Shanghai Express.” If you’re watch-agnostic, you probably wouldn’t clock that Elvis Presley wore Hamilton’s “Ventura” design in “Blue Hawaii,” or that Matt Damon had the “BelowZero” watch strapped on in “The Martian.” But Mr. Stauffer noted that fans of the brand frequently buy a watch, at least in part, because they saw it in a cherished film.

Expensive materials, delicate craftsmanship, and an economic principle that turns the usual equation of supply and demand on its head. WSJ explains why some watchmakers can charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single timepiece. Illustration: Alex Kuzoian/WSJ

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