10 Box Office Flops That Put Their Creators In Director’s Jail

Director’s jail isn’t like the regular one, since it operates under Hollywood’s own convoluted “justice” system. A singular box office flop could result in a life sentence for a filmmaker where they’re covertly blacklisted from the industry, never ever working on a big studio movie again. It’s harsh — but no one ever said that Tinseltown is a fair or forgiving place.

What’s wild is how Hollywood doesn’t take history into consideration here. A director could pump out five financially successful films in a row and have one dud, but that’s it — off to director’s jail they go. Heck, at times, movies are doomed to fail before they’re even made, but the filmmaker gets the blame in the end. Look at “Catwoman” and “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” as notorious examples. There are shopping lists with more substance than those scripts, and not even Steven Spielberg could have saved them. However, it’s the directors who are blamed for the ensuing trainwrecks when a high-powered studio exec should have said a long time ago, “Maybe this isn’t the right movie to make.”

Then again, there are directors who decide to fly too close to the Sun and burn their wings. Poor Tom Hooper must be allergic to cats at this point, while Josh Trank never wants to see another superhero project in his life. But did they deserve what happened to their careers, though? Let’s check out all the box office flops that put their creators in director’s jail.

Josh Trank established himself as a wunderkind with 2012’s “Chronicle.” Not only did the film reinvigorate the superhero genre through its found-footage approach and novel story, but it also made a lot of money for 20th Century Fox ($126.6 million from a $12 million budget to be exact). Unsurprisingly, Fox turned to Trank for 2015’s “Fantastic Four” reboot.

Trank’s star continued to be on the rise as he was offered the chance to helm a “Star Wars” movie based on Boba Fett. In 2015, it all came crashing down for him. First, Trank exited the “Star Wars” movie reportedly after Lucasfilm heard about alleged issues between the director and Fox on “Fantastic Four.” Then, on the cusp of the release of “Fantastic Four,” Trank posted and deleted a message on X, stating that the version of the movie being released wasn’t the one he envisioned, effectively disowning the theatrical cut. “Fantastic Four” bombed, making $167.9 million from a $120 million budget, but also receiving brutal reviews.

For Trank, this earned him a one-way ticket to director’s jail. It would be five years before he released his next movie, “Capone.” Speaking about what transpired to Yahoo Entertainment, Trank blamed the media reports. He said, “The stories painted a picture of this person, Josh Trank, who is inept and in over his head and causing all this damage and in conflict with all these people, and that’s not what my experience was inside of me.”

In the 2010s, director Tom Hooper was on an all-killer-no-filler streak, creating “The King’s Speech,” “Les Misérables,” and “The Danish Girl.” Next on the agenda was “Cats,” an adaptation of the wildly popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. If anyone could bring this to the big screen, it would be Hooper, right?

Everyone thought so too until the first trailer dropped. The hybrid CGI cat humanoids turned into meme fodder, as everyone felt trapped inside of Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” music video. The writing was on the wall, though there was the ability to pivot, much like Paramount Pictures did with “Sonic the Hedgehog,” after the studio and filmmaker decided to delay the film and address fan concerns about the CGI. The precedent was there, but Universal Pictures and Hooper decided to press ahead with “Cats” anyway.

So, what happened next? The expected. “Cats” was savaged by critics and barely clawed its way to $75.6 million worldwide from a $95 million budget. Matters weren’t further helped when visual effects artists spoke out about Hooper’s alleged mistreatment of them during the production, and even Andrew Lloyd Webber said the “Cats” movie was so bad that it made him buy a dog. Despite Hooper’s winning streak before “Cats,” he wasn’t forgiven for this box office flop. Hooper continued to work as a director, filming commercials for the likes of McDonald’s and Vodafone, but Hollywood didn’t exactly come knocking with his next offer.

While 1994’s “Street Fighter” stakes its claim as one of the best ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ movies of all time, 2009’s “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” is just outright bad — nothing more. It was pummeled by critics and swept its own leg to fall to $12.6 million from a $50 million budget. From the awful performances to the held-by-two-matchsticks storyline, no one walked out of that production with their heads held high — and the film sent director Andrzej Bartkowiak straight to director’s jail.

Initially, Bartkowiak carved his niche as a cinematographer, often collaborating with director Sidney Lumet, before he transitioned to the director’s chair. In the early 2000s, Bartkowiak made a name for himself in the action genre, delivering hits like “Romeo Must Die,” “Exit Wounds,” and “Cradle 2 the Grave.” While none of these films are likely to be remembered as bona fide action classics, they turned tidy profits and cemented Bartkowiak as a proven entity.

The cracks started to show with 2005’s “Doom,” which was a box office bomb and critically derided film. Bartkowiak dodged director’s jail that time, but after fluffing another big franchise movie in “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li,” he received his punishment from Hollywood. He would go back to being a cinematographer, working with Joel Schumacher on 2011’s “Trespass,” before quietly returning as a director for 2017’s “Maximum Impact” and 2020’s straight-to-demand “Dead Reckoning,” starring Scott Adkins and KJ Apa.

Tim Burton had an $18 million idea for a “Catwoman” spinoff that would have followed “Batman Returns” and starred Michelle Pfeiffer as Selina Kyle once again. The machinations of the film industry work strangely, though, and this initial plan morphed into one of the weirdest — and worst — superhero films of all time.

Warner Bros.’ big idea was for a “Catwoman” film that would have nothing to do with the character from DC, because why not?! In this version, the hero is Patience Phillips, who is resurrected by a mystical Egyptian cat — because maybe someone thought a radioactive cat bite might have been too much — and imbued with the basketball powers of Michael Jordan. To direct this picture, the studio hired French filmmaker Pitof, a recognized visual effects supervisor and second unit director on “Alien Resurrection.”

Needless to say, “Catwoman” stunk up theaters in 2004. Everyone and their grandmother dunked on the film as it bombed at the box office, making only $82.5 million from a $100 million budget. Consequently, Pitof never received another chance to direct a Hollywood blockbuster after this. In a 2024 interview with CinemaBlend, the filmmaker explained how the film’s greatest challenge was the script, so it was a constant case of tinkering with it to see how it could work. “We had a 10-day reshoot a month before release date,” he said. “Which is insane! To fix all the little problems the script had.”

Director Richard Kelly deserves to be talked about more than he is nowadays. After all, this is the filmmaker who wrote and directed “Donnie Darko” in his mid-20s. The Jake Gyllenhaal-led film didn’t light the box office on fire, but it turned into a cult classic that only gets better with time.

For Kelly, though, it got him noticed for being a visionary director with a unique eye for cinema. However, his subsequent movies didn’t build on the positive momentum — at least not in terms of box office receipts. “Southland Tales,” a 2006 mishmash of genres starring Dwayne Johnson and Seann William Scott, stalled at just under $375,000 — yes, you read that number right — and was booed right out of the Cannes Film Festival. Then, it was 2009’s “The Box,” starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden. The ballsy thriller cost $30 million to produce, but it only raked in $33.3 million worldwide.

After the last box office flop, Kelly’s mainstream career stopped in its tracks. What became abundantly clear is that the director valued creative risks over safe and generic commercial blockbusters, and any relationship with a major studio would always be volatile because of the type of films he wants to make. Kelly isn’t out of the movie-making business altogether, though, as he revealed in a 2023 interview that he still has a lot of projects he wants to do. The question is, will any major studio fund them?

Simon West’s “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” wasn’t exactly the best video game movie ever, though it made enough cheddar at the box office to keep the studio happy and for a sequel to be greenlit. West didn’t return for the follow-up, “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life,” so Jan de Bont stepped in. It seemed like the perfect pairing, since de Bont was the director behind “Speed” and “Twister,” so his visual style would complement Lara’s death-defying adventures.

While “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life” is a superior film to its predecessor and features great performances from Angelina Jolie and Ciarán Hinds, it didn’t do as well at the cash registers, making $160.1 million from a $95 million budget. This isn’t the biggest box office flop by any stretch, but it put a stake through Bont’s career as a Hollywood director.

De Bont doesn’t look back on the experience in a positive light either, telling Uproxx how he had $12 million cut from his budget on the first day. “It was not such a great experience,” he said. “But more from the reason how the studio tried to really interfere with it in a way. And the thing itself is that the makers of the game were also involved. And they never told me that they, also, have a say in the story.”

Cinema is a fickle business, since no one knows what will translate into a blockbuster success or not. That said, who in their right mind decided to fork out $100 million for the sci-fi gangster comedy “The Adventures of Pluto Nash” in the first place?! Sure, it stars a big-name actor like Eddie Murphy, but dropping this amount of money on a non-franchise IP and expecting miracles? That’s like playing truth or dare with an anaconda and being surprised when the snake tries to choke you out.

Predictably, “The Adventures of Pluto Nash” crashed and burned. In fact, it turned into one of the biggest box office flops of all time, making only $7.1 million around the world. While filmmaking is a team effort, director Ron Underwood bore the brunt of this failure. In movie business’ eyes, he’s the filmmaker behind this disaster piece and needed to be marched off to director’s jail for his punishment.

“The Adventures of Pluto Nash” had a devastating effect on Underwood’s film career. He directed one more film in 2005 titled “In the Mix,” which also flopped, before shifting his focus to television. Since then, Underwood tackled episodes for shows like “Once Upon a Time,” “Nashville,” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” while occasionally directing television movies.

Martin Brest is no average director. This is the filmmaker who brought us “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Midnight Run,” “Scent of a Woman,” and “Meet Joe Black.” Many of those movies are highly regarded in their respective genres and remain fan-favorite classics to this day. Yet, Brest’s first major misstep cost him his reputation in Hollywood.

“Gigli” turned out to be a bomb of epic proportions — both critically and financially. The film cost $75 million to make and had the star power of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez as its leads, but it stumbled to a smidgen over $7 million at the global box office. Ouch! No one escaped from this project unscathed, with even Affleck stating his most infamous bomb led to his directing career.

Brest received the worst of it. Even though his hand was forced by the production company to change “Gigli” in ways he didn’t want to, his name was forever attached to this mega-dud with the infamous line, “It’s turkey time. Gobble, gobble.” Speaking to Variety in 2023, Brest admitted that he knew his time was up in the business after “Gigli.” He said, “Once this happened, I thought I’ll never be invited back. Second, I would never be able to operate with the kind of control that a director, I feel, needs and deserves. So that felt like a clear signal it was time for me to back away.”

Frank Darabont started out as a screenwriter in the entertainment industry before transitioning to a writer-director. Needless to say, he left his mark with the one-two combo of “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” which saw both films receive critical acclaim and be nominated for Academy Awards. Next up for Darabont was “The Majestic” in 2001 — a period romantic drama starring Jim Carrey.

For all intents and purposes, it had all the makings of another hit. That’s not how it turned out, though. While the reviews were so-so, the box office performance was atrocious. “The Majestic” cost $72 million to make, but it only raked in $37.3 million.

After that, Darabont disappeared from the Hollywood blockbuster scene as a director. He returned for 2007’s “The Mist” — another Stephen King adaptation which turned a tidy profit at the box office — however, this always felt as if Darabont was more on parole rather than fully out of director’s jail. Since then, he’s stuck mostly to television, creating shows like “The Walking Dead” and “Mob City.”

Imagine receiving the keys to the car of your dreams then being told you can’t drive it. Years later, you receive the green light to drive it, but the car doesn’t start anymore since it’s been standing still for far too long. That’s the story of “The New Mutants.” Directed by Josh Boone in 2017, the superhero film found itself stuck in the middle of the weird period in which Disney acquired 20th Century Fox and no one knew what the future held. At the same time, there were plans for scheduled reshoots, but these were put on ice indefinitely due to the uncertainty surrounding the film’s release.

Finally, in August 2020, “The New Mutants” hit theaters. The bad news was the world was still stuck in pandemic mode, so no one rushed out to see the film, and it secured only $47.5 million from a reported $67 million production budget. The reviews for “The New Mutants” were also mixed, but this was always set to be a lame duck since everyone knew it would lead to nowhere in terms of shared cinematic universes.

At the time of the release of “The New Mutants,” Boone was busy working on “The Stand” miniseries, and that turned out to be his last high-profile project. It feels unfair that he found himself in director’s jail for events he had no control over, but alas, that’s show business, baby.