Steven Soderbergh names his most hated movie: “It really made people angry”
Steven Soderbergh has made an absolutely insane number of movies. Since his big screen debut, 1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotapes, the auteur has made a ludicrous 36 different feature films.
This includes a period between 2013 and 2017 when he retired from directing and made a complete mockery of the term. He regularly puts out more than one movie a year, including in 2025, which saw the release of Presence, a disappointing haunted house affair, and Black Bag, a stylish spy thriller.
Soderbergh has a lot to be proud of in terms of his best work. In the year 2000, two of his films – Traffic and Erin Brockovich – were both nominated for ‘Best Picture’ at the Oscars. His debut won the coveted Palme d’Or, making the 26-year-old the youngest solo filmmaker in history to win that award. Then there’s the likes of Logan Lucky, Contagion, Out of Sight, and the revamped Ocean’s franchise. However, on the other end of the scale, Soderbergh has a good idea of what his most hated movie might be.
“There is no question that The Good German remains the most reviled thing I’ve ever made,” he told Men’s Health, admitting that he was “baffled” by the response the film got. “People were really angry. And it was just odd, because of all the things I’ve done, that might have been the closest I got to getting what I saw in my imagination, you know? And then it just, it really made people angry.”
Released in 2006, The Good German is based on Joseph Kanon’s novel of the same name. Cate Blanchett, a Soderbergh favourite, plays Lena Brandt. She is a Jewish woman whose husband, a former SS officer with links to the V2 rocket programme, has gone missing. Jake Geismer (George Clooney) ends up embroiled in the hunt for Brandt’s husband, which is complicated by the fact that he and she used to be lovers. Theoretically, this should have been a smart, tense noir-style thriller drawing on real historical figures. Unfortunately, people hated it.
The film was a disaster in a purely financial sense. From a $32 million budget, it made just $6 million worldwide, which is incredibly surprising considering it was in the middle of the super-popular Ocean’s trilogy. From a critical perspective, the press lambasted it for being a style-over-substance near-parody of older noir flicks.
According to the man who made the movie, it’s not the fact that people don’t like The Good German that bothers him the most. “People are like, ‘Oh, I saw Solaris‘. And, ‘Ocean’s Twelve is actually not that bad’. That kind of thing,” he said. “Nobody brings this movie up. Nobody has ever said, ‘Hey, I watched The Good German again. And actually…’ Nobody has ever written that sentence.”
It’s clear that Soderbergh agrees with that old Oscar Wilde adage, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Maybe The Good German will have its day in the sun eventually, but for now, it will remain lost to time.
