In 1961, Conrad moved to the production side of the film business, producing and directing for Warner Bros. film studio. His most notable film was "Brainstorm" (1965), a latter-day "film noir" that has come to be regarded as "a minor masterpiece of the 1960s" and "the final, essential entry in that long line of "films noir" that begins at the end of the Second World War." Conrad was the executive producer of "Countdown" (1968), a science-fiction thriller starring James Caan and Robert Duvall that was the major studio feature début of director Robert Altman.