By Ryan Heffernan
Thread 3
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It is impossible to state just how difficult it is to direct a film. In addition to being responsible for every single element of the picture—ranging from minute details in every aspect of the visual presentation to the acting performances, sound design, the rhythm of the edit, and the overall tone of the picture—they must also cater to demands from studio execs and remain open to collaboration at every step while knowing that if it all goes wrong it is likely going to be them who gets blamed for it.
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While no director is immune to the occasional misstep, these 10 filmmakers found their careers abruptly derailed by one dud film. Admittedly, some of these pictures mark a bottoming out point in a director's downward spiral, but there are others that succeeded Oscar-winning triumphs and still saw the filmmaker kicked to the curb. The merciless sways of Hollywood paid no heed to former glories when these directors—be they proficient or promising—were all but excommunicated from the industry.
10 'The Black Dahlia' (2006)
Directed by Brian De Palma
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A chameleon of cinematic expression, yet also an eye-popping stylist, Brian de Palma seems like the sort of filmmaker who would be immune to flops determining his career. The director enjoyed a decades-spanning career that frequently mixed aggressive experimentation with genre-bending success, as seem by his work on films like Scarface, Mission: Impossible, The Untouchables, and Carlito's Way (among many many more underappreciated gems that time has overlooked).
However, the turn of the century was unkind to him, with 2000’s Mission to Mars a critical and commercial failure and 2002’s Femme Fatale not fairing any better. Given the hype and hope proceeding the release of The Black Dahlia—a neo-noir covering one of the most notorious murders in American history— its poor execution and shallow storytelling marked a final nail in the coffin of de Palma’s career. He has only directed three films in the almost-20 years since, with all three of them box office flops that studios did little to market in the first place.
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9 'Pinocchio' (2002)
Directed by Roberto Benigni
Having worked primarily as an actor through the early part of his career, Roberto Benigni turned his mind towards film direction with Tu Mi Turbi marking his debut in 1983. The writer-director and leading man reached the zenith of his career in extraordinary fashion with 1997’s heart-rending masterpiece Life is Beautiful, a poignant war comedy-drama which won three Academy Awards from seven nominations—with Benigni himself winning for his performance and being nominated for his direction.
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Sadly, his next outing as writer/director/star wouldn’t be quite so successful. 2002’s Pinocchio strives to coast by on Benigni’s charm, a warm family appeal, and child-like wonder, but it lacks a fantastical enrichment that sees it fall rather flat. It was an immediate dampener on what was a blossoming internation career decades in the making. While Benigni has remained largely active as an on-screen talent since, it was a major hit to his directorial aspirations. 2005’s The Tiger and the Snow—a film which divided fans and critics—remains his last directorial credit.
Pinocchio (2002)
G
Family
Comedy
Fantasy
- Release Date
- December 25, 2002
- Cast
- Roberto Benigni , Nicoletta Braschi , Carlo Giuffrè , Mino Bellei , Peppe Barra , Franco Javarone , Max Cavallari , Bruno Arena
- Runtime
- 108 Minutes
8 'Gigli' (2003)
Directed by Martin Brest
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Gigli is, above all else, a prime example of what cinematic calamities are possible when a studio strong arms creative control off a director. In fact, it’s unfair to level the critically derided box office abomination of a movie as Martin Brest’s failure, as the writer-director himself has expressed his hatred for it—and how studio execs completely butchered it—in a 2023 interview with Variety. The experience was so demeaning that Brest has opted not to work again since.
While it is a tragedy that a filmmaker should be made to feel that way by the studio that was supposed to support them, it also marks a terrible loss for cinema with Brest calling it quits. His deft eye for tone made him an impressively versatile filmmaker. He helmed sublime 80s comedies Beverly Hills Cop and Midnight Run, before turning his attention to more dramatic pictures in the 1990s, with the Oscar-nominated classic Scent of a Woman the distinguishing achievement of his career.
7 'Gods of Egypt' (2016)
Directed by Alex Proyas
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An Australian filmmaker who began his career in the 1980s, Alex Proyas rose to prominence in the eyes of many moviegoers in the 90s with his stylistic intensity, as displayed in such movies as The Crow and Dark City. While the quality of his films arguably waned in the 2000s, he was still able to turn a profit with sci-fi blockbusters I, Robot and Knowing, but the well ran dry with 2016’s Gods of Egypt.
The fantasy blockbuster combines mythology and Hollywood action with a star-studded cast, but it was unable to weave everything together effectively and, with some weak special effects to boot, it became a critically panned box office flop. While it does mark the last film Proyas has directed thus far, he has remained active in the industry, founding a production company in Sydney in 2019 and developing VidiVerse—a video platform for independent filmmakers—in 2021.
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Gods of Egypt
PG-13
Adventure
Action
Fantasy
Sci-Fi
- Release Date
- February 25, 2016
- Cast
- Gerard Butler , Nikolaj Coster-Waldau , Brenton Thwaites , Geoffrey Rush , Rufus Sewell , Abbey Lee
- Runtime
- 95
6 'Green Lantern' (2011)
Directed by Martin Campbell
The infamy of Green Lantern has become something of a running joke, one that star Ryan Reynolds has propelled himself. However, what is not quite the laughing matter is just how significant a blow the disastrous DC movie was for director Martin Campbell, who found his budget on ensuing films nowhere near the standard he enjoyed and capitalized on prior to the superhero mishap.
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Having been active in feature films from 1973, Campbell made his greatest impact in the James Bond franchise, re-inventing the spy saga not just once, but twice with his direction of GoldenEye and Casino Royale. While he has remained active since Green Lantern—and even found success with films like The Foreigner—his career has never soared to the same heights as it had before, nor has it really been given the opportunity to, which is a shame considering his balancing of gritty action and good fun is a brand of entertainment sorely missed in today’s cinema.
Green Lantern
PG-13
Superhero
Action
Adventure
Sci-Fi
- Release Date
- June 17, 2011
- Cast
- Ryan Reynolds , Blake Lively , Peter Sarsgaard , Mark Strong , Temuera Morrison , Jenna Craig
- Runtime
- 114 minutes
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5 'Poseidon' (2006)
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
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Despite its title, Poseidon ambles along as a special effects-driven disaster blockbuster with limited style and absolutely no substance. While German filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen was no stranger to manic marine movies—his WWII thriller Das Boot is his defining masterpiece and one of the finest war films ever made—Poseidon sank rather than swam, becoming a critically derided flop that cost Warner Bros. approximately $70-$80 million.
It was also a costly blow for Petersen, whose career was at something of a tipping point, with his last two films—The Perfect Storm and Troy—being financially successful but widely disliked. Petersen’s only film post Poseidon was 2016’s German crime-comedy Vier Gegen die Bank. It marks a sad end to a great career that features such highlights as The NeverEnding Story, Air Force One, In the Line of Fire, and the aforementioned war classic Das Boot.
Poseidon
PG-13
Adventure
Action
Drama
Thriller
- Release Date
- May 12, 2006
- Cast
- Kurt Russell , Richard Dreyfuss , Josh Lucas , Jacinda Barrett , Emmy Rossum
- Runtime
- 98 Minutes
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4 'Ghosts of Mars' (2002)
Directed by John Carpenter
A master of genre and visual flair, John Carpenter has long been heralded for his work in horror, sci-fi, and action, with such classics as Halloween, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, and Escape from New York marking just some of his defining hits. His career did begin to wane in the latter part of the 1990s though, with Escape from L.A. and Vampires both failing commercially and critically. 2002’s Ghosts of Mars would effectively complete his downfall.
As a space Western action-horror, it contains all the genre eccentricity one would expect of Carpenter, following a police squad on as they combat a mining colony possessed by inhuman ghosts on a terraformed Mars. The film marked yet another box office flop from Carpenter and led to studios no longer seeing him as a viable investment. He would return to the director’s chair for 2010’s The Ward, but he has since retired from film direction, though he was involved with the making of Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends as an executive producer and composer.
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Ghosts of Mars
R
Sci-Fi
Action
Horror
- Release Date
- August 24, 2001
- Cast
- Natasha Henstridge , Ice Cube , Pam Grier , Jason Statham
- Runtime
- 98 minutes
3 'Rollerball' (2002)
Directed by John McTiernan
In the late 1980s and into the 90s, John McTiernan was the director for blockbuster hits. After debuting with Nomads, he would go on to define the action cinema of the era with Predator and Die Hard, while the 90s saw him make such hits as The Hunt for Red October and underrated gems like Last Action Hero and The 13th Warrior. But his 2002 remake of Rollerball would bring about total capitulation.
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In addition to being a woefully misguided film and a horrendous box office flop, the fallout of the film would also eventually see McTiernan sent to federal prison for making a false statement to an FBI investigator. With he and producer Charles Roven clashing over ideas for the film, McTiernan hired a private investigator to illegally wiretap Roven to find out the producer’s true aspirations for the picture. He would serve a 12-month prison sentence from 2013-2014, with Rollerball being his penultimate movie—2003’s similarly poor and unsuccessful Basic stands as his last release.
Rollerball
PG-13
Action
Sci-Fi
Sport
- Release Date
- February 8, 2002
- Cast
- Chris Klein , Jean Reno , LL Cool J , Rebecca Romijn , Naveen Andrews , Oleg Taktarov , David Hemblen , Janet Wright
- Runtime
- 98 Minutes
2 'Heaven’s Gate' (1980)
Directed by Michael Cimino
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Few directors have burned through their good will and acclaim quite as rapidly as Michael Cimino. Having made an enormous impact with The Deer Hunter—which was just his second feature film and saw him win Best Director at the Academy Awards—many were initially intrigued by the follow-up picture, Heaven’s Gate, a Western epic following a feud between land barons and European immigrants in 1890s Wyoming. Against a production budget of $44 million, the film grossed just $3.5 million and earned widespread critical derision.
Worse than its commercial and critical performance, though, the production was marred by accusations of animal cruelty and its barring of the American Humane Association from being present on set. A part of the film’s lasting legacy is its morbid contribution to the authority behind the “no animals were harmed” tag that has become a common sight in film credits since. It also effectively marked an abrupt end to Cimino’s career as a Hollywood star. The filmmaker would direct a further five films but none of them made any impact and all of them have been largely forgotten.
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Heaven's Gate
R
Western
- Release Date
- November 19, 1980
- Cast
- Kris Kristofferson , Christopher Walken , John Hurt , Sam Waterston , Brad Dourif , Isabelle Huppert , Jeff Bridges , Joseph Cotten
- Runtime
- 219 Minutes
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1 'Jupiter Ascending' (2015)
Directed by The Wachowskis
As the writers and directors of 1999’s The Matrix, the Wachowskis—sisters Lana Wachowski and Lily Wachowski—will also have an esteemed place in Hollywood history. While their work on the sequels to The Matrix may not have lived up to the pioneering, mind-bending brilliance of the original, they maintained a certain aura of audacious and heady storytelling with Cloud Atlas and their screenwriting and production contributions to V for Vendetta.
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For many, Jupiter Ascending represented an exciting picture from the filmmakers, a welcome return to sci-fi action that offered a masterpiece of uninhibited, imaginative wonder. Unfortunately, the film wasn’t quite so well received, working as a visually immense spectacle, but falling short with its dramatic core. It was a substantial box office flop and remains the last film the sisters worked on together, with Lana Wachowski writing, producing, and directing The Matrix: Resurrections alone.
Jupiter Ascending
PG-13
Sci-Fi
Action
- Release Date
- February 6, 2015
- Cast
- Eddie Redmayne , Sean Bean , Mila Kunis , Channing Tatum
- Runtime
- 127 Minutes
NEXT: The 10 Worst Late-Career Movies by Great Directors, Ranked
- Movie
- Brian De Palma
- Martin Campbell
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