10 Films That Saved Directors From 'Movie Jail'

10. The Hurt Locker - Kathryn Bigelow

Despite being - to date - the only woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director, there was a time when critically acclaimed auteur Kathryn Bigelow had been written off as a B-movie director.

Bigelow's career started out strong, principally with a successful string of critically acclaimed indie films, which gave the studios enough confidence to allow her to direct arguably the greatest action films of the '90s: Point Break. However, it was Bigelow's subsequent film Strange Days which divided critics and bombed at the box office bomb, nearly ending Bigelow's career after just five films. For the next 15 years Bigelow struggled to make an impact with audiences or critics, culminating in the terribly-titled K-19: The Widowmaker, which made a measly $65 million on a $90 million budget.

Such was Hollywood's distrust in Bigelow's ability as a director, that even when she found a promising script from journalist Mark Boal, no studio wanted anything to do with it. Undeterred, Bigelow decided to independently produce Boal's script which put a spotlight on the lives of soldiers in a bomb disposal unit in Iraq.

The film, later titled The Hurt Locker, won the Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture and paved a new path for Bigelow, with her subsequent films Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit focusing more on complex social issues.