8 Movies That Got Directors Fired From Other Movies

8. Chappie Got Neill Blomkamp Kicked Off Alien 5

Neill Blomkamp sure has had one of the strangest careers of any young filmmaker.

After scoring near-universal acclaim for his 2009 sci-fi-action debut District 9 - which even netted a Best Picture Oscar nomination and Best Adapted Screenplay nod for Blomkamp - every single film since has been more dubiously received than the last.

Blomkamp's follow-up Elysium received good-but-not-great reviews, the reception to his third film Chappie was more mixed-negative, and his recently-released fourth film, low-budget horror flick Demonic, has been thoroughly panned by most critics.

But while doing press for Demonic, Blomkamp stated his belief that he was fired from Alien 5, which he was hired to direct just a month before Chappie's release, after franchise godfather Ridley Scott watched Chappie. Blomkamp said:

"It’s possible that Ridley watched Chappie and he was like, 'This guy can't do Alien so let's just go ahead and move on.'"

As for whether Blomkamp spoke to Scott after the plug got pulled and Scott instead pushed on with Alien: Covenant, Blomkamp had nothing but blunt honesty to offer:

"Not after, no no no, there's no coming back from that... I'm not gonna work on a film for two years and have the rug pulled out from underneath me and then go hang out and have beers. It's exactly why I don't want to do IP based on other people's stuff ever again."

As disappointing as Blomkamp's post-District 9 career has been, you really can't fault the guy's frustrations here.