10 Dream Directors For Hollywood's Biggest Franchises

This may be stating the obvious, but hiring the right director for a blockbuster movie is a key factor in making it a success. The reason that this point needs to be reinforced is because in today's era of franchise filmmaking, you often get the feeling that the person behind the camera isn't always the one calling the shots.

The most expensive movies are sold on the strength of the brand and popularity of the characters, not the actors wearing the costumes or people yelling 'action' from behind a monitor. As Gareth Edwards, David Ayer, Joss Whedon and others have found out in recent years, the studio will release their version of your movie into theaters, and there's nothing you can do it about it.

Maybe this is part of the reason why the studios are now recruiting relatively inexperienced directors straight from independent cinema or commercials and putting them in charge of mega-budget productions, in the hope that they'll be more willing to work with constraints and compromise. Yet, for every Colin Trevorrow or Joe and Anthony Russo that make it seem like a good idea, there's a Josh Trank or Carl Rinsch to provide the counter-argument.

Blockbuster movies in general are becoming more homogenized and familiar on an annual basis, meticulously designed to appeal to everyone and offend no-one. Studios need to take more chances on directors that could actually do something exciting with the material because the safer they play it, the less people are going to care.

The Transformers series is in dire need of a fresh creative direction now that the Michael Bay era is over, and Neill Blomkamp could use a hit to reignite a still-promising career that has stalled a little in the wake of two tepidly-received movies in succession. Based on that logic alone, uniting the two could be beneficial to both parties.

While Elysium and Chappie may have disappointed in comparison to his breakthrough feature District 9, there is no denying that Blomkamp is a natural when it comes to crafting sci-fi and manages to wring every last drop out of his budgets, with all three of his effects-heavy feature films looking much more expensive than they actually cost to produce.

With a keen eye for visuals, familiarity with mechanized characters and solid grasp of directing action, Blompkamp's style is seemingly tailor-made for Optimus Prime and company. And with Paramount reportedly having up to sixteen Transformers movies in the pipeline, the South African filmmaker should be at the top of the studio's wish-list to reinvigorate the flagging franchise.