Hollywood's Greatest One-Hit Wonder Movie Directors
The movie business is fickle. One day you're up; the next, you're down. A well-received, financially profitable project is no guarantee of future success, leading to Hollywood one-hit wonders. Film history is littered with talents, including directors and actors, who burst onto the scene only to disappear from the public eye for a variety of reasons.
Sometimes, directors in particular produce a work so brilliant and beloved that this one work overshadows everything else they'll ever make. Although the directors listed here are not currently on the A-list, they always have one movie that will forever be remembered by film fans around the world.
- 1112 VOTES
Hit Movie: Rookie of the Year
Non-Hit Movies: N/A
Daniel Stern was a well-established movie star by the time he got to direct Rookie of the Year thanks to his work in the Home Alone and City Slickers franchises. Stern used that newfound industry clout to direct a family film, the baseball fantasy Rookie of the Year. The film was a minor hit that became one of numerous kids baseball films (Little Big League, Angels in the Outfield, The Sandlot) of that era to become a cult favorite with millennials.
Stern even resurrected his pitching coach character, Phil Brickma, to inspire the Chicago Cubs team that won the World Series in 2016. But Stern never directed another movie in his long career.
- Photo: The Sandlot/20th Century Fox263 VOTES
David Mickey Evans
Hit Movie: The Sandlot
Non-Hit Movies: Beethoven's 3rd, Beethoven's 4th, First Kid, The Sandlot 2
Sometimes, a hit movie can define a career so much that it's impossible to shake the reputation associated with it. Such is the case with David Mickey Evans, who rose to prominence as the director of The Sandlot, a popular 1993 baseball movie for kids. The Sandlot is a seminal film for millennials and baseball fans alike. But Evans's career is filled with movies chasing that success. He's mostly done children's movies, even going back to direct a sequel to The Sandlot that went straight to video.
- 369 VOTES
Hit Movie: American History X
Non-Hit Movie: Detachment
American History X, a hard-edge drama about a reformed racist, earned an Oscar nomination for star Edward Norton in 1998. That might have launched director Tony Kaye into the upper echelons of the movie business. Instead, Kaye disappeared, thanks to the turbulent nature of the film's production. Kaye and the studio, New Line Cinema, squabbled over the editing of the movie. Kaye's original cut was rejected in favor of a studio-assembled edit. Kaye was so disgusted by New Line's version of American History X that he lobbied, unsuccessfully, to have his name removed from the movie's credits. Kaye wouldn't direct another narrative feature until 2011. He has been tapped to direct the upcoming movie Civil.
- 474 VOTES
Hit Movie: V for Vendetta
Non-Hit Movies: Ninja Assassin, The Raven, Survivor
For James McTeigue, an accomplished assistant director, his big Hollywood break came through a longtime association with the Wachowskis, the directors behind the Matrix trilogy. McTeigue was the first AD for both Matrix sequels, which made him a natural choice to direct an adaptation of Alan Moore's classic graphic novel V for Vendetta when the Wachowskis purchased the film rights to the book.
V for Vendetta was a solid box office hit when it came out in 2005, but almost immediately, rumors spread that McTeigue didn't direct the film at all and was used as a front to allow the Wachowskis to helm the film without any pressure. That rumor persists, because McTeigue hasn't directed a successful or critically appreciated film since.
- Photo: Risky Business/Warner Bros.556 VOTES
Paul Brickman
Hit Movie: Risky Business
Non-Hit Movies: Men Don't Leave
Paul Brickman helped create the legacy of Tom Cruise by directing his pantless dancing scene in Risky Business. Brickman likely could have made just about anything after that movie's stunning success in 1983. Instead, he disappeared from Hollywood. Brickman told Salon:
The success of Risky Business was strange because I had Hollywood coming at me full throttle. I found it very uncomfortable. I moved out of LA immediately. Studio heads sent me wine goblets and food baskets. And people threw material at me right and left, and lined up to meet me. It gets uncomfortable. Some people like the visibility. I don’t. I’m more from the J.D. Salinger school.
In the same interview, Brickman revealed he was offered movies like Rain Man and Forrest Gump, which both went on to be major hits and Oscar winners. Seven years after Risky Business, Brickman returned to direct the drama Men Don't Leave, but that movie flopped, leaving him with a lot of what-ifs. Brickman has subsequently said he "squandered a really good career" by avoiding the spotlight after Risky Business.
- 664 VOTES
Eduardo Sanchez And Daniel Myrick
Hit Movie: The Blair Witch Project
Non-Hit Movies: Seventh Moon, Believers, Solstice
The Blair Witch Project cost only $60,000 to make. Released in 1999, the film earned a whopping $248.6 million in box office receipts. Part of the success of the found-footage faux-documentary is the attention to detail Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez brought to the elaborate viral marketing campaign that rolled out on the early internet. That detail allowed the studio to position Blair Witch as though it were actually real. Novelty and mystery fueled the massive revenues for the movie, but it could never be replicated. Sanchez and Myrick went their separate ways, directing low-budget movies. They never got back to the heights of fame and fortune they had found in 1999.
- 753 VOTES
Troy Duffy
Hit Movie: The Boondock Saints
Non-Hit Movie: The Boondock Saints 2
The ultimate moviemaking cautionary tale, Troy Duffy's story is one of David vs. Goliath mythologizing and self-inflicted infamy. Duffy was a bartender struggling to make it in the music business in Los Angeles when he witnessed the aftermath of a grisly crime scene, which inspired him to write The Boondock Saints. The film, a vigilante fantasy, was passed from studio to studio through personal contacts. Eventually, it was bought by Miramax Films, then the biggest name in independent film. Miramax (owned by the now-disgraced Harvey Weinstein) had made brand names out of outsiders with quirky backgrounds like Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and others. It seemed Duffy would be the next Cinderella story to be ushered onto the A-list. Miramax eventually dropped out, however, perhaps owing to Duffy's growing reputation as a difficult person to collaborate with.
Franchise Pictures eventually agreed to finance the movie, but through a deal that ended up being onerous for Duffy. The movie struggled to find distribution, and was eventually bought by a small company that dumped it on a limited number of screens.
Duffy's story became the basis for a critical documentary called Overnight. That documentary painted Duffy as a man out of his depth, incapable of navigating the choppy waters of the motion picture industry. Although Duffy's career did not take off the way he might have expected when he sold his script to Miramax, Boondock Saints did become a cult hit through healthy DVD sales. It was enough to help Duffy get a sequel made, Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day. Although that movie earned a decent $11 million from a scant 524 screens, it didn't lead to further work. Still, thanks to a lawsuit against Franchise Pictures, Duffy is now the owner of the Boondock Saints intellectual property and has enjoyed significant profits from the original, the sequel, and various merchandising deals.
- Photo: Newmarket Films857 VOTES
Hit Movie: Donnie Darko
Non-Hit Movies: Southland Tales, The Box
If Donnie Darko isn't the most cult film of the 2000s, it's at least in the top five. Richard Kelly's knotty, time-travel dramedy starring Jake Gyllenhaal found a sizable audience during the advent of the DVD. Kelly's subsequent attempts to replicate that success were met with far less positivity. Allegedly, Southland Tales was greeted with boos when it premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. The Box, a 2009 adaptation of a Richard Matheson short story, grossed a mere $33 million worldwide. Kelly hasn't made a film since.
- 940 VOTES
Roger Kumble
Hit Movie: Cruel Intentions
Non-Hit Movies: Cruel Intentions 2, College Road Trip, Furry Vengeance
Directing a franchise-starting film can be both an opportunity and a hazard, either leading to years of work shepherding a series of big movies or a typecasting dead end. Consider Roger Kumble, director of the Sarah Michelle Gellar/Reese Witherspoon teen thriller Cruel Intentions. The film was a box office success that made Gellar and Witherspoon movie stars, but it was the apex of Kumble's career.
Kumble directed three episodes of a Cruel Intentions prequel TV series for Fox called Manchester Prep, but although Fox ordered the show to series and the production team completed three episodes, Fox chose to cancel Manchester Prep before a single episode aired. To salvage a lost project, production company Original Film cobbled together those shows into a feature film they titled Cruel Intentions 2. Marketed as both a prequel and a sequel, Cruel Intentions 2 went straight to video and flopped, but it did bear the name of Roger Kumble. It didn't ruin his career, because he went on to direct multiple studio movies, but none of them were as popular as Cruel Intentions. He directed family films and teen comedies like College Road Trip and the young adult romance After We Collided.
- 1053 VOTES
Hit Movie: Remember the Titans
Non-Hit Movies: Death in Love, Max, Safe, Uptown Girls
Boaz Yakin got his start in Hollywood adapting the popular Marvel comic book The Punisher into a feature film in 1989. Although that movie didn't become a box office smash, it did allow Yakin to continue pursuing his dream. Smaller directorial efforts Fresh and A Price Above Rubies led to the hit football movie Remember the Titans. That put Yakin in the running for a variety of big projects, including a thwarted Batman reboot based on beloved animated series Batman Beyond. Yakin never got that big-budget spectacle on his resume. Instead, he went back to smaller films. His most recent work is the little-seen horror movie Boarding School, which sits at 33% on Rotten Tomatoes.
- 1166 VOTES
Hit Movie: Star Trek: First Contact
Non-Hit Movie: Thunderbirds
Jonathan Frakes surprised Hollywood by making one of the most profitable Star Trek movies ever in 1996, but his follow-ups struggled at the box office and didn't lead to a longer career on the big screen. His kids time-travel adventure Clockstoppers was a minor success, while his adaptation of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's puppet spy TV show Thunderbirds was an infamous box office failure. Frakes has said in multiple interviews that he's in what he calls "movie jail," unable to get work in feature films. He remains a sought-after TV director, though. He's worked on shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Orville, and Star Trek: Picard.
- 1245 VOTES
Hit Movie: Gothika
Non-Hit Movies: Babylon A.D.
After years of being known in America first as an actor in such films as Amelie, Frenchman Mathieu Kassovitz got the big job of directing Halle Berry in the horror movie Gothika, which took in $141.6 million worldwide in 2003. But instead of immediately pouncing on his success, Kassovitz didn't direct another movie for another five years. The result of that patience was Babylon A.D., a movie that struggled to even be finished thanks to intense clashes between the director and the studio.
Kassovitz claimed 20th Century Fox meddled in his work, while Fox declared Kassovitz was negligent in his duties and allowed the budget to balloon out of control. Kassovitz distanced himself from the movie when it was finally released, even though he revealed that the reason for his five-year absence from filmmaking was because of his single-minded passion for this particular project. He's since returned to making films in France and hasn't worked on a major American studio release since.
- 1362 VOTES
Hit Movie: District 9
Non-Hit Movie: Chappie
An Oscar nomination for best picture had Neill Blomkamp off and running in 2009. His first feature film, District 9, was a satirical breath of fresh air in an increasingly sanitized blockbuster film world. People liberally threw around the word "visionary" when mentioning the South African filmmaker. His follow-up, Elysium starring Matt Damon, covered much of the same darkly comic, near-future dystopian territory as District 9, but it topped out at 65% on Rotten Tomatoes and didn't hit the box office heights of its predecessor.
Blomkamp's next big swing was Chappie, a movie that hit the brakes on his upward trajectory. Chappie, a disappointment to film critics, earned only $31.6 million at the North American box office. Blomkamp was briefly attached to reboots of both Alien and RoboCop, but his next move remains a mystery.
