Brooks won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his satirical black comedy film The Producers (1967) and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the satirical western comedy Blazing Saddles (1974) and Best Original Song for its title theme.

He won two Writers Guild of America Awards for Best Original Screenplay for The Producers and Blazing Saddles.

He adapted The Producers into a commercially and critically successful 2001 musical on Broadway starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

The production transferred to the West End in London where Brooks won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical in 2005.

For his work on television he received the Primetime Emmy Award Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for the CBS variety special The Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris Special (1967) and as well as three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for the NBC sitcom Mad About You in 1997, 1998, and 1999.