5 Movies That Changed a Director's Career...For Better or Worse

The useful part

If filmmakers play their cards right with projects, one film can catapult them into superstardom and respect for the rest of their careers. Consequently, the inverse is also true if one misstep is monumental enough. Let's take a look at five movies that permanently altered a director's career…for better or worse.

How it works

• While A House of Dynamite received relatively mixed reviews, particularly for its controversial conclusion, her work post Hurt Locker has solidified her as an aspirational figure in the genres she...
• However, she made history in 2010, when she became the first woman to win the Best Director Academy Award for the Best Picture-winning film, even beating out her ex-husband, James Cameron, for the award,...
• The head of corny classics like Point Break and Near Dark, she had already made more than a name for herself in that space by the time the film came out.
• Since then, she has become synonymous with ultra-serious militaristic, governmental epics like Zero Dark Thirty, Detroit, and most recently A House of Dynamite.

Details worth keeping

Bigelow was always moderately well known in the action movie space. Verbinski was seemingly unstoppable in the 2000s. He directed the American remake of Ringu</e...