Gavin Hood
Indie Work: South African helmer Hood got his start making educational films before writing, directing and starring in his low-budget feature debut “A Reasonable Man.” That got him the job of helming Polish-language African-set drama “In Desert and Wilderness” in 2001 before he got his major breakthrough with gritty drama “Tsotsi,” which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and put him on studio radars. That was followed by his English-language debut, the topically terrorism-themed thriller “Rendition” with Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Meryl Streep.
First Big Budget Feature: “Rendition” was a critical and commercial disappointment, but by then Hood had already landed his next megabudget film: “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” the first spin-off of 20th Century Fox’s “X-Men” franchise. Long in the works, the film, once more starring Hugh Jackman alongside Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Lynn Collins and Ryan Reynolds, investigated the early life of Logan. After gaining the wrong sort of attention after a leaked workprint made its way online a full month before release, and was downloaded as many as 4.5 million times, the film finally hit theaters on May 1st, 2009, and made $373 million worldwide.
Budgetary Leap: “Tsotsi” cost about $2 million, while “Rendition” leapt to about $25million. “Wolverine” was six times as much, with a stated production cost of $150 million.
Success Or Failure? Failure, for the most part. Fox probably weren’t too upset at the film’s box-office, although it was nearly $100 million less than the franchise’s previous picture “X-Men: The Last Stand,” and they were undoubtedly hoping for more. But it’s the critical and fan reaction that was really negative. The film’s a mess, easily the worst in the franchise, layering on mutant cameos, nonsensical plotting, and cliches. Response from fans was basically poisonous, and Fox decided to essentially reboot the franchise with “X-Men: First Class,” with the essentially unconnected sequel “The Wolverine,” following in 2013. How much Hood is to blame is debatable — there was clearly a lot of studio interference — but it landed him in director’s jail for a few years, before he returned with last year’s better-received “Ender’s Game.”
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Indie Work: Gallic helmer Jeunet started off in animation, before teaming with artist Marc Caro to direct post-apocalyptic fantasy “Delicatessen” in 1991. The witty, heavily-stylized film was an international hit, and led to follow-up “The City Of Lost Children,” a bigger-budget steampunk fable that played in competition at Cannes in 1995.
First Big-Budget Movie: After other filmmakers including Danny Boyle, Bryan Singer and Peter Jackson turned the project down, Fox went to Jeunet and offered him his English-language, and solo, directorial debut with “Alien: Resurrection,” which they were pressing on with despite the death of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley at the end of “Alien3.” The film (penned by future “Avengers” helmer Joss Whedon, though he’s mostly disowned the finished product) sees Ripley resurrected 200 years on as a part xenomorph-clone who clashes with a group of mercenaries and scientists determined to bring back the creatures. Released on November 26th, 1997, it took a mere $47 million in the U.S., the lowest-grossing film of the franchise at that point, but did better internationally, earning a further $110 million.
Budgetary Leap: “Delicatessen” cost about $5 million, “The City Of Lost Children” about three times that. “Alien: Resurrection” clocked in around the $75 million mark.
Success Or Failure: A fairly resounding failure. The film has some interesting ideas, and Jeunet makes it look handsome, but it’s caught awkwardly between the filmmaker’s idiosyncracies, Whedon’s original script and the studio need to imitate the earlier films, and the result is something of an orphan (though compared to “Alien Vs. Predator,” and even “Prometheus,” it looks a little better). Jeunet had a tough experience (though later said that he enjoyed it), and returned to France, where he had his biggest success with “Amelie.” The director recently made his return to English-language filmmaking with the rather disappointing “The Young & Prodigious Spivet,” but he’s never returned to the studio world (though flirted with “Life Of Pi” at one point).
Spike Jonze
Indie Work: Jonze was one of the best-loved music video directors of the 1990s who, after a brief flirtation with a big-budget debut for Sony in the shape of an adaptation of “Harold And The Purple Crayon,” arrived in features with the staggeringly imaginative “Being John Malkovich” in 1999, which earned him a Best Director Oscar nomination. Jonze followed it up swiftly with a reunion with writer Charlie Kaufman on “Adaptation,” which was admittedly studio-backed (Columbia released it), but cost only a little more than ‘Malkovich.’
First Big Budget Film: “Where The Wild Things Are,” an ambitious adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s novel, which others (including Disney) had mooted bringing to the screen before. Jonze was on the project for the best part of a decade, first at Universal, then eventually at Warner Bros, and he shot the film (which starred young Max Records, and the voices of James Gandolfini and Lauren Ambrose, among others) in 2006. The tumultous production took almost three years to complete (including substantial reshoots), before hitting theaters on October 16th, 2009. It took around $75 million in the U.S, and another $22 million internationally.
Budgetary Leap: “Being John Malkovich” cost about $13 million, “Adaptation” around $19m. Substantial reshoots and the lengthy post-production pushed “Where The Wild Things Are” over the $100 million mark in the end.
Success Or Failure? Creatively, if you ask us, a success: Jonze’s big budget picture wasn’t universally acclaimed, but we’d call his devastating look at childhood one of the best films of 2009. Commercially, though, it was less so, failing to make back its production budget, and likely losing Warners close to $100 million when marketing was factored in (it’s actually almost remarkable that it was only that much, given how uncommercial the final product was). Jonze returned to lower-scale territory for his follow-up, the self-penned “Her,” and won an Original Screenplay Oscar for his trouble. But it also wasn’t a commercial hit. Time will tell if he ever returns to the big-budget arena.
