10 Directors Who Should Never Be Trusted With Giant Budgets

Two things are certain in Hollywood: death and throwing loads of money at film-makers without restraint.

By Scott Campbell /

Although the likes of Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich aren't exactly critical darlings, they make movies that audiences generally can't get enough of, which has seen their combined filmographies take over $8bn at the box office. But on the other side of the coin, there are many directors who are consistently rewarded with expensive projects despite the vast majority of their big-budget output being nothing short of terrible. In recent years, a number of untested directors have been given the reins of blockbuster movies with decidedly mixed results: Joseph Kosinski, Rupert Sanders and Noam Murro have all successfully made their feature debuts armed with budgets of $100m and above, while Carl Rinsch fared much, much worse with 47 Ronin. The temptation is always to reward a young, upcoming director with a massive budget after an initial success: Gareth Edwards and Colin Trevorrow both made their first movies for a few hundred thousand dollars, before quickly moving on to $150m blockbusters Godzilla and Jurassic World respectively. With that in mind, this article will look at 10 directors who simply can't be trusted with giant budgets. It is a list that includes successful directors that failed to make the leap to more expensive fare, respected auteurs that saw an increase in funds result in sheer over-indulgence and several names that are somehow rewarded with a ton of money to make a string of blockbusters of ever-declining quality.