Yahoo Movies 7 directors who were replaced and the barmy reasons why
We're used to thinking of directors as the final authority on the movie set, but they have more than just their adoring public to answer to.
There are studios, producers, actors and a whole lot of other people to keep happy if you want to get your movie made – and some rather strange reasons why a director might find themselves swapped out for someone else.
1. Edgar Wright – Ant-Man
Edgar Wright was hired to direct Ant-Man in 2006, two years before Marvel Studios' first hit with Iron Man. You would think the intervening decade would have been enough time for them to decide that they weren't sure about his style. In 2014, Wright was announced to be leaving the project.
"The most diplomatic answer is I wanted to make a Marvel movie but I don't think they really wanted to make an Edgar Wright movie," he later told Variety. "I was the writer-director on it and then they wanted to do a draft without me, and having written all my other movies, that's a tough thing to move forward. Suddenly becoming a director for hire on it, you're sort of less emotionally invested and you start to wonder why you're there, really."
Peyton Reed replaced him, and the film came out in 2015.
2. Brenda Chapman – Brave
Pixar is known as the creator of loveable animations... but it also has a thing for shifting around directors. Toy Story 2, Ratatouille and Cars 2 all went through serious shakeups. For Brave, Brenda Chapman was being billed as the studio's first female director, developing a story inspired by classic fairy tales and her relationship with her daughter.
Chapman has spoken about the "devastating" moment when she was replaced by Mark Andrews. The usual 'creative differences' line was trotted out and, from what we understand, she had planned a darker story than the Brave that was eventually released.
"To have it taken away and given to someone else, and a man at that, was truly distressing on so many levels," she said, and – in relation to comments by a Frozen animator that it is hard to portray female characters' "range of emotions" and "keep them pretty" at the same time – she noted that the animation industry is "run by a boys' club". Make of that what you will.
3. George Cukor – Gone with the Wind
It may be the most successful film ever, but that doesn't mean everything ran smoothly on movie mogul David O Selznick's legendary Civil War epic. Despite having spent two years working on pre-production for Gone with the Wind, George Cukor was replaced by Victor Fleming (who had also eventually replaced him on The Wizard of Oz).
There are endless stories about how controlling Selznick was on set, and how Cukor resisted his interference, driving a wedge between the long-time collaborators.
Star Clark Gable had issues with Cukor, too. Legend has it that Cukor – whose sexuality was an open secret in the industry – claimed that he knew Gable from his early days as a hustler on the Hollywood gay circuit, and that the conservative actor was not happy to be reminded of the fact. Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland are said to have begged for Cukor to stay, but to no avail.
Related: Actors who were brilliant in terrible movies
4. Richard Donner – Superman II
Richard Donner's famous firing from Superman II (which he had filmed back-to-back with the first, hit movie) is wreathed in a certain amount of mystery, but seems to have come down to money.
Donner has said his issues with producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind were "always about money" and accused them of not telling him what the budget was and then complaining that he was exceeding it.
On the Salkinds' part, Ilya has said that Richard Lester was brought in to replace Donner because their relationship broke down over the budget, the director not being able to "make up his mind" and disagreements over the direction of the movie.
Reading between the lines, the decision to cut Marlon Brando's Jor-El segments from the sequel might have been a motivating factor, too. "If we had kept him in it, he would've gotten the same 11.75 per cent back-end participation that he received on the first film, and it financially wasn't doable," said Ilya Salkind.
Donner's cut of the film was eventually pieced back together and released – two years after Brando's death in 2004, incidentally.
5. Richard Stanley – The Island of Dr Moreau
The Island of Dr Moreau adaptation in 1996 is one of those films whose production was so troubled that there is now a documentary about what a disaster it was.
Richard Stanley had wanted to make the movie since being disappointed by the 1977 version, and reportedly sought the aid of a warlock called Skip, who used his powers to convince Marlon Brando that Stanley was the man for the job.
So far so good, the morally questionable abuse of magic notwithstanding. But when Brando's daughter died by suicide, Stanley's biggest supporter went into seclusion. Val Kilmer – who was in the midst of a divorce – then started acting up, demanding to swap roles in order to cut his time on set by 40 per cent. Much of his performance was said to be unusable
It seems a bit unfair to blame Stanley for Kilmer's erratic behaviour, but it was a key reason for New Line Cinema replacing him with John Frankenheimer after three days of shooting. (Frankenheimer didn't find Kilmer any easier to work with, saying: "I don't like Val Kilmer, I don't like his work ethic, and I don't want to be associated with him ever again." Ouch.)
Stanley is still trying to get his own take on Dr Moreau made.
6. Alex Cox – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
When you're adapting a cult literary classic, you might want to adopt a certain amount of humility. Sid & Nancy's Alex Cox clearly missed that memo, managing to alienate both the star of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Johnny Depp, and its author, Hunter S Thompson.
Depp recalled a visit Cox made to Thompson's home. "It didn't go very well," he told Rolling Stone. "They were very precious about their script, whereas Hunter had written one of the greatest pieces of 20th-century literature, and I would say that's something to be precious with, not a screenplay."
The eccentric Thompson had some more powerful words for Cox. "Here in my house comes this adder, this asp," he said. "And he just persisted to insult and soil the best parts of the book. It's a miracle I didn't fu**king stab him with a fork."
Cox also clashed with the producers, and no one was keen on his plan for animated sequences in the movie. Soon Terry Gilliam was in, and Cox was out.
7. Dick Richards – Jaws
It's hard to think of Jaws as anything but a Steven Spielberg film, but it was initially set to be directed by the made-up-sounding-but-real Dick Richards (Tootsie).
We're sure that there was more to it than just this, but the story goes that producers Richard D Zanuck and David Brown became completely infuriated by Richards's insistence on referring to Jaws as a 'whale' instead of a shark.
He may also have downplayed the horror aspects of the film. Whatever the case, Richards was out and the rest is history.
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