10 Movies That Changed Because Of A Director’s Bad Behaviour

Remember 1975’s Jaws, the famous killer shark blockbuster from director Dick Richards?

No?

That’s because the director of The Culpepper Cattle Company went on to make Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (those iconic films we all know and love) in the same year instead. Thus the job of filming Jaws went to a younger, lesser known director.

So, what did the original director do to prompt being dropped from the project? As this list has shown, directors are often able to get away with all manner of maddening behaviour before they’ll be dropped from a project. So what did it this time?

Well, original director Richards’ repeated references to a “killer whale” as the villain of the film really rubbed the producers up the wrong way, resulting in the hiring of young relative unknown Stephen Spielberg as his replacement. That’s right—the iconic blockbuster which was responsible for the cinematic institution of the summer tentpole film may not have existed if Dick Richards could recall the difference between a killer whale and a great white shark.

So why didn’t he get offered 1977’s Orca?