10 Directors Who Survived Huge Movie Failures
The guidebook on how to escape Hollywood jail.
From the outside looking in, it's very easy to underestimate how complicated the movie business can be. For us fans, we hear an announcement and some initial casting news, wait a few months for the first trailer, then wait a bit longer for the film itself. After that... we move on to the next one.
But for the filmmakers and executives involved, the process is obviously much more complex. Once they choose a project, they're stuck with it every single day for the next several years, through thick and thin, and once it's done, they have to cope with the aftermath, which isn't so easy to do if they have a massive flop on their hands.
But even from the ashes of defeat - with a damaged reputation, huge financial losses, and no love from critics - filmmakers can still bounce back.
Whether they're highly motivated by the memory of their failure or they already had a follow-up project lined up, we've seen some truly impressive comeback stories of directors suffering career-derailing catastrophes, only to get back on their feet in no time at all, sometimes even delivering their best work yet.
10. Josh Trank (Fantastic Four)
2015 was not a good year for young Josh Trank. His highly-anticipated Fantastic Four reboot bombed spectacularly, losing tens of millions of dollars for 20th Century Fox and earning one of the worst Rotten Tomatoes scores of the entire year.
But that wasn't the only piece of bad news for the filmmaker. Earlier in the year, it was announced that he would be leaving the production of an upcoming Star Wars spinoff, and while Trank said that his departure was amicable, follow-up reports indicated that his erratic behaviour on the set of Fantastic Four had led to Lucasfilm firing him.
Star Wars aside, it was the failure of the superhero blockbuster that seemingly tanked his mainstream career. Trank, reportedly, was wildly out of control on the film's set, and apparently caused around $100,000 worth of damage to a rented home. On the night before the movie opened, he also published a tweet essentially disowning the film, displaying a lack of professionalism that didn't help his reputation.
Four years later and Trank is by no means back to the heights of Marvel and Star Wars, but his upcoming film - Fonzo, starring Tom Hardy - is generating a lot of early buzz, fantastic news for a filmmaker who very nearly ended his career in the span of a few short months.