10 Film Directors Who Desperately Need A Win
Director's Jail can often be a very difficult place to escape from.
Long gone are the days when movies were marketed and sold based on the person behind the camera, with the director now arguably one of the least important aspects in modern Hollywood when it comes to their most expensive and potentially lucrative projects.
Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino are some of the very new names who can convince people to go to the movies based on the strength of their personal brand alone, with existing properties and big-name franchise now king.
Even the likes of Martin Scorsese and Michael Bay have joined the streaming revolution in recent years, with many auteurs finding it more difficult than ever to get their latest efforts off the ground at the major studios. However, sometimes a string of bad movies in a row, constant rumors of misbehavior or even flat-out bad luck can have a profound effect on a director's career, one that can potentially take years or even decades to recover from.
10. Doug Liman
Doug Liman may have directed one of the best sci-fi movies in recent memory in Edge of Tomorrow, and then stayed in the Tom Cruise business with wildly entertaining biopic American Made, but he still hasn't managed to shake his reputation as a filmmaker that greatly struggles to get his projects across the finish line, or even off the ground at all.
He's been labeled as difficult to work with ever since The Bourne Identity, and that tag has only gotten heavier around his neck in recent years. Not only did Edge of Tomorrow's shoot go way over schedule, Liman also re-shot the ending to his low-budget Amazon exclusive The Wall, and in the interim agreed to direct comic book flicks Gambit and Justice League Dark before quickly jumping ship on both.
His latest movie, literary adaptation Chaos Walking, started filming in August 2017 but isn't set to be released until next January, with the studio so unhappy with an early cut of the $100m blockbuster that they ultimately replaced him with Fede Alvarez when they decided to spend another $15m on extensive re-shoots.
His next project is set to be Edge of Tomorrow sequel Live Die Repeat and Repeat, and for the sake of his career prospects and reputation, he really needs it to go off without a single hitch.