10 Directors Who Just Made Their Worst Movie

Barry Jenkins is one of the best and most feted filmmakers working today, with his first three features - Medicine for Melancholy, Moonlight, and If Beale Street Could Talk - all receiving high acclaim from critics.

Moonlight, of course, also went on to win the Best Picture Oscar, while nabbing Jenkins himself a Best Adapted Screenplay gong and seemingly charting a course for the filmmaker to enjoy a long career making robust dramatic fare. And so it was quite the shock when Jenkins was announced to be directing Mufasa: The Lion King - both because a CGI-heavy Disney film seemed so far outside his wheelhouse, and because even few fans of The Lion King were actually asking for it.

Now to be fair, compared to most films on this list, Mufasa isn't terrible by any means. Jenkins clearly wasn't treating this as an easy paycheck gig and tried to wring every drop of "humanity" possible out of it, but just like its 2019 predecessor, Mufasa's excessively photoreal animal renderings ultimately detract from the overall experience.

Worst of all, very little about this feels like a legit Barry Jenkins movie. Were his name not on the credits, it'd be easy to assume any decently competent studio hand was employed for the job.