13 Movies Actually Ghost Directed By A Second Filmmaker
1. Steven Spielberg - Poltergeist (1982)
This 80s horror movie is a definitive classic of the genre, yet a myriad of differing opinions on who actually directed it - the credited Tobe Hooper, or writer/producer Steven Spielberg - have led the product into a confused state of whose responsible.
The person to trigger the rumour was Spielberg himself who was quoted in an interview with the LA Times in 1982;
“Tobe isn’t…a take-charge sort of guy. If a question was asked and an answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming, I’d jump in and say what we could do. Tobe would nod agreement, and that became the process of collaboration.”
He quickly refuted this, with an open letter he submitted to the Hollywood Reporter soon after.
Rumours persisted though, with evidence suggesting that Speilberg basically needed someone to fill the director's chair due to external reasons. The films camera assistant John Leonetti, recently clarified this point:
“...Steven Spielberg directed that movie. There’s no question…It was really more of a set-up because Steven developed the movie and it was his to direct, but there was anticipation of a director’s strike, so he was ‘the producer’ but really he directed it in case there was going to be a strike and Tobe was cool with that. It wasn’t really anything against Tobe.”
What's clear is if there was a rift between the directors after then it was resolved before Hooper’s passing in 2017; they collaborated twice more with Hooper directing episodes of Spielberg TV shows Amazing Stories and Taken.