Movies That Wrecked Directors' Careers

All it takes is one strike to derail your career in Hollywood, and it can be a long, arduous process to get back in the game. That was the case for Damien Chazelle, M. Night Shyamalan, Gore Verbinski, James Mangold, and countless others. One misstep was all it took and some of them were out of work for years, decades, or their whole lives.

In this video essay, I want to take a look at Movie Jail (or Director Jail, if you prefer), specifically what it is and how one lands there, those that have landed there and how they got out, and how Hollywood can change to ensure it's less of a recurring thing.

00:00 Intro
00:30 The Curious Case of Damien Chazelle
03:58 How & Why Movie Jail Happens
11:29 Other Directors in Movie Jail
21:10 Finding a Happy Medium

#damienchazelle #mnightshyamalan #entertainment #films #movies #babylon #lalaland #whiplash #avatar #jamescameron

[nihilismistheonlyway]

I always found it kind of ridiculous that a director is expected to make hit after hit all in a row with no mistakes at all. It's not realistic.

[mahdude]

I hope Damien Chazelle makes another low budget movie. Whiplash proved he can do a lot with a little.

[TheElizander]

The fact that Zack Snyder still has an active career despite the fact he hasn't made a profitable and well received movie since 300 is astonishing.

[snacktime]

studios putting a director in movie jail when they were the ones who chose to release a film during a GLOBAL PANDEMIC is absolutely insane.

[miguellee]

The biggest problem with Babylon, was its marketing along with its name. All they were showing in trailers were people dancing, drinking, having sex and doing drugs.
.
There was no interesting dialogue or premise of what the movie was really about in its marketing. So, no one showed up.

[LostFanaticBenLinus]

It's way too soon to say either way with Damien Chazelle or James Mangold. But I'm shocked no one here has mentioned Tom Hooper with Cats. Guy won an Oscar for directing and hasn't even been heard of since Cats.

[alexisrockman]

All of Kubrick’s movies made studios money, that’s why studios gave him what ever he wanted . . Ridley Scott has a much more erratic box office record but when he hit big, it was huge.

[unkopower]

people seem to forget it but Akira Kurosawa was in director jail in Japan in the mid to late 70's after Dodeskaden and quitting/fired from Tora Tora Tora. He was only able to get KAGEMUSHA made because Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg came to the rescue.

[mg]

Babylon was released in a time where counter programming doesn’t exist. Babylon should’ve done moderately well (though the high budget would always be an issue) as the adult drama placed against the general audience big blockbuster, but the previous Christmas had a similar situation with West Side Story, Licorice Pizza, and Nightmare Alley all being major flops against Spider-Man. The barbenheimer meme was so large that we had an exception, but otherwise it’s been hard for non IP blockbusters to compete against the tent poles in the current times.

[hutche]

Hollywood is a dark place man, if a struggling director refuses to take the studio's shitty project then that director is banned to ever work in the industry. Same goes for the actors and the actresses. A proper puppet technique.

[thetrison]

May Denis Villeneuve have all the time and money he needs. May his audience have the intelligence to grant him the successes he deserves.

[Antinome]

It's insane how much money La La Land made for an old fashioned musical.

[N-GinAndTonicTM]

It fucks me off because we're in a period where studios blame audiences for not seeing their movies, yet they either start advertising these things like a month before they come up; 2 years before we'll even see anything else on it, or just not at all.

And I'm getting sick and tired of being blamed for something flopping, when it's marketing is so piss poor.

[camperroni]

Francis Ford Coppola is another big director who was put in movie jail for One from the Heart

[ericwhisamore]

Damien Chazelle isn’t even in movie jail. He has a new movie at Paramount slated for next year. Budget is smaller, but he is still working with the same studio

[Nova_the_starcatcher]

if youre gonna make a 3 hour long movie you gotta bring back the early 1900s practice of INTERMISSIONS, some of us gotta pee and would rather watch that stuff at home so we can pause

[Sympathy_forLadyVengeance]

Babylon was such a bizare experience. It starts with an elephant shiting itself and I was like "what the actual fuck is this?" and for a while it wasn't doing much for me, but then we get to that chaotic scene where Nellie is shooting her first talkie scene and I was blown away, and after that the film kept getting crazier but also more beautiful and at the end, while almost bawling my eyes off, I was like "ok, this is fucking amazing". One of my favourites from that year. It was like Singing In the Rain meets The Artist (both films I love) but on cocaine.

[delix]

Babylon is still a masterpiece to me. 🎬

[Myspace]

Shyamalan is a risk taker, loves what he does, not for everyone but great choices from him. His choice to put his house on mortgage could have been a disaster but it paid of in the long run.

[Cloudstrike_]

Chazelle is a generational talent. He’s not going away anytime soon.