Directors Fired During Filming

Directing movies might seem like a glamorous career, but underneath all the glamorous trappings of the gig, it's still a job—and like any occupation, it comes with a certain number of professional risks, including the chance that you might annoy the wrong people at the office and end up being shown the door.

Hollywood is driven largely by appearances, and the folks in charge of the studios tend to have a ton of experience dealing with temperamental creative types, so disputes are often ironed out behind the scenes. Sometimes, however, those efforts end up being for naught and everything boils over into the type of PR disaster every company would like to avoid at all costs: the public firing and replacement of a film's director. The next time you find yourself staring at a pink slip, think about these filmmakers, and count yourself lucky that your firing didn't unravel in the press.

Richard Donner was initially hired by producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind to direct both Superman and Superman II, but conflicts plagued both productions from the beginning. Donner has alleged that the Salkinds were overly concerned with the budget—although they refused to tell him what the budget actually was—and claiming he had to do significant rewrites on the fly.

The initial plan was to film Superman and Superman II back to back, but production on the sequel was put on hold so Donner could finish up the first film in time for its planned release. Still, he'd already filmed a significant number of scenes in the film—estimates say as much as 75 percent—by the time production was shut down in October of 1977.

Donner claimed he received a telegram from the Salkinds saying he was no longer needed for the rest of the film, and significant portions of the film were reshot under new director Richard Lester. The Lester-completed version was a box office and critical success, but fans lamented the loss of Donner's take for years. It was eventually re-edited and released in 2006 as Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut.

For such a classic film, The Wizard of Oz actually had to travel down quite a troubled yellow brick road to the big screen. The film's initial director, Richard Thorpe, only completed a few weeks of filming on the project before production had to be halted because the original Tin Man, Buddy Ebsen, became sick due to the powder used to turn him silver for the character. 

Production was shut down as the studio tried to find a new actor to play the Tin Man, and during this time, the studio reviewed the footage and decided they were unhappy with Thorpe's work. According to Victor Fleming, who'd eventually take over the project, Thorpe didn't understand the more fairytale aspects of the film; as Fleming put it, Thorpe wasn't able to "think like a kid." 

George Cukor was brought in for an intermediary stint as the studio looked for a new director, and he pushed the film in a new creative direction that was later continued by Fleming, who took over for the remainder of filming. However, Fleming himself eventually left the project near the end of filming when he was called to take over for Cukor on Gone with the Wind, leaving King Vidor to finish up principal photography. Fleming ended up being the only director credited on the project. 

Martin Brest was an up-and-coming director when he signed on to WarGames, which was then working from a script from Lawrence Lasker and Walter Parkes. Lasker and Parkes' original draft was passed over by studios because it was confusing and heavy on the tech side; Brest re-wrote it to be a darker thriller that eventually made its way to production.

However, shortly into filming, Brest was fired and replaced with Saturday Night Fever director John Badham, who said that, while he included some of Brest's footage in the final product, he thought that the scenes made it look like the actors weren't "having any fun." Badham ended up lightening the tone for the rest of the film.

Although Brest was worried that the firing would ruin his budding career, it ended up working out fine, with the director soon signing on to Beverly Hills Cop and later earning an Academy Award nomination for Scent of a Woman. Sadly, he ended up dropping off the map completely after leading the notorious flop Gigli, his last credit to date. 

Anthony Mann was famously replaced by Stanley Kubrick during the filming of Spartacus, just 14 days into production. While Mann didn't get far into the film, he did leave a notable mark on the picture: his opening scene stayed in the final cut.

There have been a few different reasons presented over the years for Mann's departure, with some saying he was overwhelmed by the grand scale of the movie and others describing a struggle for creative control. Ultimately, star Kirk Douglas—who was also a producer on the picture, and secretly hired blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to pen the script—stepped in. Mann was out, Kubrick was in, and the rest was Oscar-winning history.

When John McTiernan started working on The 13th Warrior, it was still called Eaters of the Dead—the same name as the Michael Crichton novel on which it was based. The expensive film had a set release date and even a teaser trailer when it was screened for early test audiences...whose reactions were overwhelmingly negative.

This led to the studio firing McTiernan and replacing him with Crichton, whose lack of film experience would come back to bite the studio when he conducted major reshoots in what became a hugely expensive and long-delayed production.

According to star Vladimir Kulich, the conflict between McTiernan and Crichton was so great that he had to film separate endings for both men, with Crichton saying McTiernan's work didn't matter because he had final cut. The film ended up being a huge failure, panned by critics and losing millions of dollars for the studio with just a $61 million gross against a $160 million budget. McTiernan ultimately ended up with directing credit, although he may have ended up wishing Crichton had gotten it instead.

When X-Men director Bryan Singer signed on for Bohemian Rhapsody, a biopic about rock band Queen and its late singer Freddie Mercury, it seemed like a match made in heaven. However, things took a turn for the worse during the movie's production, ultimately resulting in him being dropped from the film.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Singer missed multiple days of filming, leaving cinematographer Thomas Newton Sigel to direct on days where he didn't show up. This reportedly led the movie's star, Rami Malek, to complain to the studio. A representative from the Directors Guild of America is said to have been sent to set to observe.

Things reportedly continued to devolve, eventually culminating in a fight between Singer and Malek that allegedly resulted in Singer throwing an object. While the two were said to have made up, Singer failed to report back to the show's London set after Thanksgiving break, leading the studio to shut down production with just two weeks left to go. Shortly after, the studio decided to terminate Singer.

Singer quickly shared an alternate account, insisting that while he and Malek at times had "creative differences" on set, they had let them go and were ready to resume filming after the holiday. The real problem, according to the director, was that he needed to take time off to take care of a "gravely ill parent," and Fox refused to accommodate his request.

Shortly after his firing, Singer was replaced by Eddie the Eagle director Dexter Fletcher. Fletcher already had a connection to the project—he was previously hired to direct the movie in December of 2013, when Ben Whishaw was attached as the star, and later ended up leaving the project over creative differences with producers. While it may have served as a nice full circle moment for Fletcher, Singer's firing was just another disruption in a movie that had already been through a torturous development process—and it raised the question of whether Singer or Fletcher would ultimately receive the final director's credit.