10 Movies Directors Regret Making

It's so easy for moviegoers to take for granted just how damn difficult it is to get even the worst movie made. No matter how bad a film might be, there's someone, somewhere, who worked extremely hard on it. And for many directors, a gig is a gig. A film might not have the greatest script, but if it pays decently and keeps them in the life to which they're accustomed, that's not so bad, right? Yet that hasn't stopped filmmakers periodically piping up, getting uncommonly honest, and even straight up announcing that they regret one of their past ventures. So, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with films directors regret making. The Game, David Fincher Though few are going to hold up The Game as one of David Fincher's better movies, by any metric, it's a taut, solidly crafted thriller. Yet Fincher, ever the famous perfectionist, has serious misgivings about the film's third act, enough that he even wishes he followed the advice of his wife and producer and didn't direct the movie at all. In a 2014 interview with IndieWire, Fincher said, "...in hindsight, my wife was right. We didn't figure out the third act, and it was my fault because I thought if you could just keep your foot on the throttle, it would be liberating and funny." Though the game's ending, where it's revealed that Nicholas's entire harrowing ordeal was indeed a staged game, is certainly the film's most polarizing aspect, there are still many fans who are very, very happy that a director as skilled as Fincher was the one to make it. Filming TV is cool, but you know what else is cool? Protecting your privacy online. Scan the QR code or click the link in the description and get up to 76% off a two-year NordVPN plan, plus three months free if you sign up today. I'd make that deal. Damn good deal. Fifty Shades of Grey, Sam Taylor-Johnson 2015's big-screen adaptation of hit erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey cycled through a bevy of filmmakers before landing with On the Rise director Sam Taylor-Johnson. The film was ultimately panned by critics, and Taylor-Johnson received a Worst Director Razzie nomination for her work, yet her filmmaking was certainly totally competent, if unsurprisingly unable to elevate an atrocious script. Though the director was reportedly paid over $2 million for her work and initially approached to return for the two sequels, she opted to walk away due to her difficulty working with series author E. L. James. In a 2017 interview with The Sunday Times, Taylor-Johnson revealed that while she couldn't quite bring herself to say out loud that she regretted the experience, that's basically what she feels in retrospect. The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2, Frances Lawrence Frances Lawrence was hired to direct the entire two-part adaptation of the Hunger Games series' final book Mockingjay, with both movies being shot back-to-back. But even before Part 1 was released, many questioned the necessity of splitting a book the same length as its two predecessors in half, beyond the obvious money-grubbing reasons, of course. And indeed, once Part 2 came out, the most common criticism of the duology was that the split was unnecessary, and Mockingjay could have been easily adapted as a single film. Lawrence kept quiet about this for years, but while recently promoting his Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, he confirmed to People that he regretted making Part 2, rather than simply producing Mockingjay as one movie. He said, "'I totally regret it. I totally do. I'm not sure everybody does, but I definitely do.'" Ironically, perhaps the most vocal criticism of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is that its ending is rushed, with some suggesting it might have actually benefited from a two-part split. Oh, the irony. Che, Steven Soderbergh Though few will hold up Steven Soderbergh's two-part Che project as one of the director's movies, it's certainly a laudably ambitious, sober-minded effort topped by a terrific performance from Benicio Del Toro as the titular revolutionary. Both films proved bitterly divisive with critics, and Soderbergh has since spoken extensively about how personally draining the back-to-back production was, enough that he wishes he never actually made the movies at all. In a 2009 interview with The Guardian, he confessed, "'Everybody got scarred by Che a little bit. I don't know how to describe it. It took a long time to shake off. It was just such an intense four or five months that it really, you know, for a year after we finished shooting, I would still wake up in the morning thinking, thank God I'm not shooting that film. Literally, I'd wake up and think, at least I'm not doing that today.'" The interviewer also point-blank asked Soderbergh if he wished he hadn't made the film, and he replied with a clear, emphatic, "'Yeah. Transformers The Last Knight, Michael Bay.'" Michael Bay doesn't really come off as a director who regrets anything he makes, and yet he's been incredibly candid about overstaying his welcome in the Transformers franchise and continually accepting paychecks, even when his creative juice for the franchise was basically used up. In an interview with Unilad while promoting his most recent film, Ambulance, Bay said, "'I made too many of them. Steven Spielberg said, just stop at three, and I said I'd stop. The studio begged me to do a fourth, and then that made a billion, too. And then I said, I'm going to stop here, and they begged me again. I should have stopped.'" Given that Bay revealed his net worth was sitting at around $500 million in 2016, the man clearly doesn't need Transformers-size paydays to keep himself going, and if Ambulance proved nothing else, it's that he can deliver superior results on a smaller canvas and tighter budget. Dune, David Lynch David Lynch's 1984 adaptation of Dune may well be one of the most disappointing films of all time. An intermittently enthralling, yet often leaden blockbuster which was quite obviously put through the executive mangle, enough that Lynch effectively disowned it. A big sticking point for Lynch is that he didn't have final cut on the production, and despite knowing the risks this presented, he signed on regardless. Though Lynch evidently doesn't like talking much about Dune, enough that he even vowed to never watch Denis Villeneuve's new adaptation, he has admitted that he shouldn't have made it, and since then, he has been adamant about having final cut on all of his projects, and with Dune's immediate follow-up, Blue Velvet, Lynch even agreed to slash his salary in half and drastically lower the film's budget to make that happen. Green Lantern, Martin Campbell Martin Campbell is one of those reliable journeyman directors every studio wants to have on their speed dial, because if you give him a great script, he'll deliver spectacular results, and even if not, he'll do his damnedest to elevate mediocre material. But it's tough to picture anyone salvaging 2011's risible DC superhero film Green Lantern, which from the ground up just seemed like an egregiously ill-advised project. A $200 million budget for a movie based on a superhero general audiences weren't terribly familiar with, and one that dared to render Ryan Reynolds' Lantern suit entirely in post-production, risky doesn't even begin to describe it. Green Lantern went on to flop critically and commercially, its legacy cemented as something of a punchline once Reynolds' career rebounded with the Deadpool movies. Campbell, who hadn't directed a film as CGI-reliant as this before, seemed out of his depth, and in a 2021 interview with Screen Rant, admitted that he shouldn't have made it. He said, "'The film did not work, really. That's the point, and I'm partly responsible for that. I shouldn't have done it. Superhero movies are not my cup of tea, and for that reason, I shouldn't have done it. But directors always have to carry the can for the failures.'" Success has many fathers, failure has one, and that's me, G. Lee, Martin Brest. G. Lee is one of the most infamous flops of all time, a stonking box office failure which also won six Razzie Awards, including Worst Director and Worst Screenplay for filmmaker Martin Brest. The director effectively had his career torpedoed by G. Lee's catastrophic failure, and he hasn't directed anything in the 20 years since and has maintained an extremely low profile, though in a recent Variety interview finally broke his silence about the film. While Brest was reluctant to even speak the movie's name aloud, preferring to call it the G Movie, he said of his experience making the film, "'Extensive disagreements between the studio and myself got to the point where post-production was shut down for eight months while we battled it out. In the end, I was left with two choices, quit or be complicit in the mangling of the movie. To my eternal regret, I didn't quit, so I bear responsibility for a ghastly cadaver of a movie." Brest additionally revealed, as many suspected, that he struggled to get subsequent scripts off the ground, and so rather than spend years fighting to get them made, he decided to quit the industry altogether. The Impostors, Stanley Tucci 1998's The Impostors, the second directorial effort from Stanley Tucci, while receiving broadly positive reviews from critics, was a box office flop. In a 2021 interview on Variety's Award Circuit podcast, Tucci spoke irreverently about the film's failure and his own regrets with making it as not only director but also writer, producer, and star. He said, "'Every now and then, someone will come up to me and say they loved the second movie I made, which was called The Impostors. They say, it's my favorite movie of all time, and then I accuse them having escaped from an asylum.'" Sure, the movie wasn't a hit and certainly a comedown from his acclaimed 1996 debut, Big Night, but Tucci's still being pretty damn harsh on himself here. It's not like he made Gigli, right?