10 Genre Directors Who Stepped Out Of Their Field (And Failed)
6. John Carpenter Was Forced Into Studio Films
It's not difficult to get John Carpenter to open up about his frustrations with the studio system. Eventually, the problems that arise just trying to get a film off the ground led to the director retiring to play music, smoke weed and play Sonic The Hedgehog.
Though Carpenter is more associated with the horror genre, he has a firm background in sci-fi, often blending the two in works that were initially failures such as The Thing, Prince of Darkness and They Live.
By the '90s, he found himself locked in studio contracts. Seemed the only way Carpenter got to make the films he wanted was to throw the studio a bone occasionally. It was nothing new to the director, he had done the same with Starman, a departure into romance, in 1984.
It seemed, though, that he was for the first time actively making films he had no interest in. 1992's Memoirs of an Invisible Man is most certainly not a John Carpenter film (it's in the only in his filmography not to be labeled "John Carpenter's..."), but it doesn't deserve the bile it receives from die hard fans.
Nevertheless, it was a flop, with critics calling it lazy and conventional. The same cannot be said for the film's groundbreaking visual effects, which Carpenter uses inventively.