10 Directors Who Should Never Be Trusted With Giant Budgets

4. Jan De Bont

After over 20 years as a cinematographer that had lensed studio hits including Die Hard, The Hunt For Red October, Basic Instinct and Lethal Weapon 3, Jan de Bont stepped behind the camera and made one hell of a directing debut. Made for just $30m, Speed would go on to earn over $350m at the box office and establish itself as one of the greatest action movies ever made. Sadly, from here there was nowhere to go but downhill for the Dutch film-maker, with his last three movies earning a combined 16 Razzie nominations. A hot property after the success of Speed, de Bont's next effort was the similarly high-concept $92m blockbuster Twister. As pure spectacle it is a serviceable piece of hollow, effects-laden entertainment that would go on to become the second biggest movie of 1996 with almost $500m in box office takings, seemingly turning de Bont into the go-to guy for studio tentpoles. And then came Speed 2, which earned less than $165m on a $110m budget, and earned its reputation as one of the worst sequels ever made; poorly written, badly acted and thoroughly tedious. Deciding to switch genres, de Bont next directed the $80m remake of The Haunting and managed to waste a massively talented cast in a laughably cliched 'horror' full of admittedly-impressive effects but thin characters and awful dialogue. Despite these two notorious misfires, de Bont was then hired to helm the $95m video game sequel Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life. Poor reviews would see the movie gross almost $120m less than its predecessor, and 11 years on de Bont is yet to release another feature. For a man that saw the total cost of his post-Speed output reach $377m in studio funds, the end results weren't great.