10 Films That Switched Directors During Production

Making a movie is hard work.

Even on the smallest of scales, it requires a director to organize the efforts of several dozens of people to work towards a singular goal. Not only does a director have to make every choice with this final goal in mind for months, even if no one else sees it, they also have to maintain their sanity during the shoot.

All of this while also maintaining budget constraints, trying to please the studio, and working in exceedingly stressful circumstances. So it's no real surprise that Hollywood history is chock-full of horror stories where directors didn't make it all the way through production. In fact, it's kind of a miracle that anyone can make it all the way through.

There have been several high profile cases of mid-film director switches as of late, but this phenomenon is far from new. Some of the most beloved films of all time have had switched directors midway through production and still become classics.

These are the most notorious cases in Hollywood history in which a director left the film or was fired midway through production.

One of the most recent and more infamous cases on the list, this past summer's Star Wars film suffered from just having the wrong issues at the wrong time.

After years of pre-production and planning, directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (of The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street fame) were a few months into filming when, in June of 2017, it was suddenly announced that they were fired from the film. Seeing as the film's scheduled release was already less than a year away, Lucasfilm had to move fast to replace the duo, turning to studio friend and filmmaker veteran Ron Howard to complete the film.

Once Howard took over, the film went through extensive reshoots to provide a more consistent tone and to get things a bit closer to what was in the script written by Lawrence and Jon Kasdan. The finished film wound up being a rip-roaring good time that delivered everything anyone could have possibly wanted from a young Han Solo movie, but the negative publicity garnered from this mid-production change marred the film's financial success.