2. Dick Richards Was Fired Because He Kept Calling The Shark A "Whale" - Jaws
Before Steven Spielberg stepped in and delivered the blockbuster masterpiece that is
Jaws, a director named Dick Richards was hired to helm the movie, but ended up getting fired for what has to be the most insane (and asinine) reason imaginable - one so bizarre, in fact, that I feel kind of sorry for the guy. Although there were certainly other reasons as to why he was eventually replaced, apparently his firing genuinely hinges on the fact that he kept referring to the movie's iconic shark as a "whale." He wrote it all throughout his treatment, too, so frequently that the producers fired him because it actually got the point where it had irritated them so much. Presumably Richards thought that the shark was actually a whale, because he
also tried to downplay the horror.