Five directors who are one bad movie away from ruining their careers
Hollywood does not possess any guarantees. One minute, you can be riding high, experiencing more success than you ever thought possible, the next, you’ve fallen to the bottom of the pile, basically forgotten.
When you enter the filmmaking industry, however, this is to be expected, because that unpredictability is what keeps it going, so never get too comfortable is the mantra. For the filmmakers we’ve chosen below, their careers might be intact for now, their legacies still fairly stable, but if they were to make one more bad movie, they risk losing any remaining integrity they once had.
As cinema progresses, trends come and go, and the pressure to make a huge hit (you’re not going to get funding for another movie if your last one wasn’t a glittering financial success) can sometimes result in a movie that just doesn’t hit the mark. I’m sure it’s not easy to make films that feel authentic under the current model of Hollywood, but you can’t help but watch certain movies and wonder how a filmmaker went from Oscar-winning success to Oscar-baiting shite.
So, from Chloé Zhao to Francis Ford Coppola, here are five filmmakers who risk destroying their careers if they release one more bad movie.
Five directors one bad movie away from ruining their careers:
Harmony Korine
I hate to say it, because Gummo, for what it’s worth, is a bold artistic statement, while Spring Breakers is, in my opinion, wholly misunderstood, but Harmony Korine’s career is going south.
The filmmaker emerged on the scene when he was just 19, writing the screenplay for Kids, which is certainly a controversial one, albeit one rooted in uncomfortable realism, and with Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely, he continued using an experimental lens to capture the weird in the mundaneness of humanity, the extraordinary within the ordinary.
Recently, though, he’s made some bizarre ventures into gimmicky territory, beginning with the infrared Aggro Dr1ft, starring rapper Travis Scott, which received mixed reviews, hardly showing the artistry he once possessed when he made the beautifully disgusting Gummo. Then came Baby Invasion, which utilised artificial intelligence, of course, further sparking debate, not only because of Korine’s adoption of AI, but also because it feels like he’s lost that unique ability to look at the intimate lives of others against a backdrop of chaos. Now it seems like he just wants an easy way to provoke audiences for the sake of it.
Emerald Fennell
Before Emerald Fennell even released Wuthering Heights, the amount of controversy she found herself in was extraordinary. As teaser clips and photos emerged showing woeful miscastings and a surprising amount of latex, the Saltburn director appeared to lap up the outrage. While the film managed to gross $240.4million against its $80m budget, many audience members were seemingly there to see how badly the film would massacre Emily Brontë’s original novel, and massacred it was alright.
The filmmaker had already stirred up intense criticism with Saltburn, but before that, her debut feature, Promising Young Woman, bagged her an Oscar for ‘Best Original Screenplay’. She also acted as a showrunner on the coveted BBC series Killing Eve and appeared as an actor on shows like Call the Midwife and The Crown, but now, it seems like the general public have little patience left with her ‘depraved’ take on cinema, which is all style with no real substance.
Cameron Crowe
After writing and/or directing movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe seemed poised to continue making great films, balancing humour, romance, and some fairly interesting commentary on social and gender dynamics, but unfortunately, his career has gotten weaker and weaker since the early 2000s, with titles like We Bought a Zoo and Aloha failing to become anything particularly noteworthy.
With Aloha seeing Crowe forced to apologise for whitewashing one of the characters, the director’s once prosperous career looked like it was going rapidly downhill; plus, it’s been over a decade since he made a film now, with the last thing he directed being a music video for Stevie Nicks in 2020. He’s set to make a biopic about Joni Mitchell, but if this fails, then that’ll surely be the final nail in the coffin.
Francis Ford Coppola
Once upon a time, Francis Ford Coppola was the golden boy of Hollywood, cranking out hit after hit, with The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, all of which was the work of someone who seemed confident in what they were doing, but in the decades since, his output has gotten progressively worse, culminating in the utter disaster that was Megalopolis in 2024. You could say that this film has already ruined his career, but with a few more projects already in the pipeline, it seems like people haven’t fully given up on him yet.
I think that if he releases one more movie as awful as Megalopolis, then there’s no going back for the filmmaker. By that point, he would’ve made way more flops than hits, with just that glorious ‘70s period that has allowed him to keep his legacy in Hollywood. Of course, some of the movies he made in the ‘90s and 2000s have been decent, but none were ever on the level of The Godfather, not even close. It seems like he’s just lost that spark he once had.
Chloé Zhao
Starting out with acclaimed works like Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider, Chloé Zhao eventually rose to mainstream prominence when she picked up an Oscar for ‘Best Director’ for Nomadland, which also scooped up various other accolades, like ‘Best Picture’. The filmmaker seemed like she was ready to take on Hollywood as its most vital new voice, but instead, she went on to make the terrible Eternals for Marvel. Opting for a Marvel job after winning an Oscar is a curious decision; surely money can’t be that tight?
Following Eternals, however, was Hamnet, the buzzy imagining of William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes’ relationship and family life, predominantly focusing on the maternal grief experienced by Agnes. Played by Jessie Buckley, who won an Oscar for her performance, Hamnet was, I can’t keep it in, nothing more than trite Oscar bait.
With Terrence Malick-esque visuals of the natural world and an insane amount of crying and screaming, it gets tired real fast. Zhao feels a long way from the authenticity of her first features, and if she follows this up with another huge blockbuster or weepy slice of Oscar bait, then her career can only head one way: towards ruin.
