6. Tom Hooper - Les Miserables
Hooper is far from a legendary director, but both The Damned United and The King's Speech were solid biopics that brought two un-cinematic stories to the screen with style. I'd even go as far as to say the smaller Damned United was a better piece of filmmaking with equally strong acting than the later Oscar darling. Despite being a massive box office success and getting some healthy awards attention, his next film Les Miserables proved incredibly divisive. Fans of the musical loved it, but for everyone else it was overly long, meandering and incredibly on the nose. Now feel free to call me wrong, but if a film only appeals to the existing audience isn't it failing to some degree? The real issue is less the adaptation we got, rather the heightened view the stage musical has. Its plaudits find it preposterous that anyone isn't au fait with its story, but while Les Mis has proved influential for stage musicals, it's not had such an impact on popular culture, so aiming for an cinematic epic may not have been the best idea (see the much more modest and successful Liam Neeson starring version).
Did he pull it back? We'll have to wait and see. Hooper's not settled on his first post-Miserables project, but rest assured it'll star high quality actors in a period setting telling a story based off a partially fictional novel.