10 Directors Who Took Insane Breaks Between Movies
Not every director jumps from project to project; some take extensive breaks in-between films...
It's not unusual for someone to take a work break after finishing a huge project, and the same is true for the people who make movies. After all, creative types like directors tend to pour their heart and soul into a film, so they deserve to take it easy when they wrap a film.
For most, this could mean taking the summer off, or possibly even longer so they can find a new project to work on, or simply try something new like writing. For some directors, the call to say "action" to a group of performers may lay dormant for far longer.
There are several film directors who take this break way too seriously, and while you might think a year or two is a long time to take a break, there are directors who blew past that mark on their way to a decade and beyond.
Taking long breaks between directing jobs may result in the creation of an incredible film, but it may just as well result in a dud. Regardless of their reasons, these ten directors had no compunction about taking their time between projects.
10. Lynne Ramsay
Lynne Ramsay is a successful Scottish film director whose filmography includes numerous critically acclaimed films including Ratcheter, Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and You Were Never Really Here. Most of her films deal with guilt related to death and its aftermath, and she has been praised for her work.
She has a nine-year gap in her directing credits between Morvern Callar (2002) and We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011). That extensive gap came at the hands of her work on Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, which Ramsay did not direct. That honor went to Peter Jackson, but only after Ramsay spent years working on it.
Ramsay spent four years following her work on Morvern Callar developing The Lovely Bones for film. She used a pre-published manuscript as a basis for her script development, but soon after the book was published in 2002, Ramsay's work wasn't considered to be mainstream enough to capture the bestselling book on film due to the departure her script took from the source material.
This led to Peter Jackson picking up the reigns where Ramsay left off, and she had to move on to other projects. She began developing We Need to Talk About Kevin, which she ultimately produced, wrote, and directed.