10 Promising Films Ruined By Changing The Director

What's a ship without its intended captain? Sunk, that's what.

By Percival Constantine /

A screenplay is written, a director is found, a cast is selected, then the film begins shooting. Afterwards, the film goes through editing and digital effects before being released to the public. That€™s the general expectation for how the filmmaking process works, but it doesn€™t always happen that way. Films are constantly going through changes, even up to the release. Last-minute cast changes, script rewrites, test audiences hating the ending and leading to reshoots, and sometimes, the studio heads may decide they don€™t like what the director is doing and so they€™ll bring in someone new. The director usually provides the vision of the film. Every director puts his own stamp on it. So changing one at the beginning or even during production can lead to a really confusing mash-up of ideas. This usually happens when studios want a director more willing to sacrifice their vision in order to step to the studio€™s marching orders. And sometimes, a popular franchise can lose its director between films, which then leads to someone new coming in who doesn€™t have the same connection to the material. We€™ve looked through some of the blunders in film history to find examples of times when this has happened. Movies that once had promise when their original director was attached to them, but quickly ended up turning into a steaming pile of cr*p after the replacement director turned in the finished product.