10 Directors Who Should Never Be Trusted With Giant Budgets

6. Rob Cohen

Beginning his career in the 1970s as a producer, Rob Cohen moved into directing via television before hitting the mainstream with his theatrical debut Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. A critical and commercial hit, the movie opened at the top of the domestic box office and would go on to earn $63.5m worldwide against a $14m budget. Cohen would then assume the role of studio hand-for-hire, a role he continues to this day. Moving into studio film-making, Cohen's follow-up was the family adventure Dragonheart, a $57m fantasy that earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects. Then came abysmal Sylvester Stallone disaster vehicle Daylight, which suffered from disappointing returns given the $90m budget. After unintentional hilarity with The Skulls, Cohen inadvertently started the most lucrative franchise in Universal's history when The Fast And The Furious earned over $200m worldwide; creatively, this would be the peak of the director's career. Cohen would then re-team with Vin Diesel for the $70m spy movie xXx, which was a commercial success despite being incredibly loud and just as stupid, and then came the ludicrous Stealth, a bloated $135m misfire that became one of the biggest box office bombs in history, earning just $76.9m. After that catastrophe, the director was somehow handed a $145m budget to take the reins of The Mummy franchise. Based on name value alone, Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor earned over $400m worldwide but the final product was nothing short of terrible, and failed to resurrect the already tired series. Cohen's most recent effort saw him working with a smaller budget for the first time in over a decade and Alex Cross, starring a woefully miscast Tyler Perry, was panned by critics and failed to even recoup the $35m production costs. The only logical explanation for Rob Cohen's continuing stream of big-budget movies must be his connections at Universal Pictures, who distributed most of his output. In his eight movies since The Bruce Lee Story, only his collaborations with Vin Diesel and involvement with the already-established Mummy franchise have yielded financial success. The rest of his career is filled with mediocre genre pictures that haven't exactly set the box office alight or warranted much critical praise.