In the early to mid-1970s, many enormously successful and influential directors who had been working since the late silent/early sound period, including George Cukor, John Ford, Henry Hathaway, Alfred Hitchcock, George Stevens and William Wyler, were in the process of making their final films. Added to this group were many others, still active, who began directing in the 1940s like John Huston, Elia Kazan, Vincente Minnelli, Otto Preminger, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann. A random list of titles made by these talents includes classics like Gaslight, Born Yesterday, A Star Is Born (1954), Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Searchers, Kiss of Death, True Grit, The 39 Steps, Vertigo, North by Northwest,  Psycho, A Place in the Sun, Shane, Mrs. Miniver, Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, Funny  Girl, The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, Gentleman’s Agreement, On the Waterfront, Meet Me in St. Louis, Gigi, Laura, The Man with the Golden Arm, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, High Noon, From Here to Eternity, A Man For All Seasons, and dozens more.

It’s also undeniable that the once-innovative and esteemed directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age had run out of innovations and their final films were subjected to critical roasting and major financial embarrassments; Ford, Seven Women (1966), Stevens, The Only Game in Town (1970), Wyler, The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970),  Preminger, The Human Factor (1975), Hathaway, Hang-Up (1974), Minnelli, A Matter of Time (1976), Kazan, The Last Tycoon (1976), Wilder, Buddy, Buddy (1981), Cukor, Cannery Row (1982), Zinnemann Five Days One Summer (1982). Hitchcock and Huston managed to acquit themselves admirably right to the end while Orson Welles’ long-litigated final film, The Other Side of the Wind (2018) was completed nearly three decades after his death with financing from Netflix. 

Taking their place was a newly minted generation of directors, influenced by film schools, foreign cinema, as well as those film-makers who had come before them. Like their predecessors, they were playing by a similar, if not exactly the same, set of rules governing production and distribution. There were a few inescapable wrinkles. The original studio moguls who lived and breathed motion pictures were gone by the early 1970s and were replaced by executives with backgrounds in law, agenting, or investment banking. Corporate takeovers of Paramount (by Gulf & Western), United Artists (by Transamerica), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (by Kirk Kerkorian’s Tracinda Corporation), Warner Brothers (by Kinney Corporation), and Columbia (by Coca-Cola), reshaped the upper echelon landscape and disrupted administrative continuity at these studios. And of course, the cost of making and marketing movies was on an exponentially upward slope.

Nevertheless, this new generation of directors learned to navigate the changed landscape. 1 . Some were shaken out after a few flops. Others, like Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, chose to build empires rather than continue directing. But the standout members of this generation continued directing major productions including (in chronological order of their first features) Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Ron Howard and Robert Zemeckis. With Ron Howard the youngest at 70 and Clint Eastwood the oldest at 94, these most successful, critically-acclaimed directors of the last half-century are steadily approaching their last take. So, it’s worth perusing their accomplishments, against which upcoming directors will be measured.

Following the industry’s rule-of-thumb of grading every director’s performance in boxoffice dollars (“the gross”) – is a simple and understandable method of tracking a film’s reception. And, as crass as it may be, in the motion picture industry, “you’re only as good as your last picture.”  

Steven Spielberg, whose lifetime hauls as a director total $10.5 billion, has been the perennial champion – until recently. His resumé reads like a laundry-list of all-time hits, including Jaws (1975 -$471 million), 2 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1980), E.T. the Extraterrestrial, (1982), The Color Purple (1985), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Jurassic Park (1993) with a career high of $1.34 billion when admissions averaged $4.14, Schindler’s List (1993), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Minority Report (2002), Catch Me If You Can (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, (2008), Lincoln (2011), Bridge of Spies (2015), The Post (2017) and Ready Player One (2018) which was saved from sizable failure by international returns.

Although some of Spielberg’s efforts were honorable break-evens or non-mega-budget failures like Empire of the Sun (1987), Always (1989) and Amistad (1997), his first unmistakable miss was The BFG (2016) with a disappointing worldwide gross that resulted in an estimated loss of $100 million. West Side Story (2021) was praised by critics for its attempt to reset the classic 1957 play, but was dealt the worst of all hands. When it was finally released after a year-long delay during the Covid pandemic, the moviegoing audience had undergone major changes. Streaming had siphoned off a large part of the adult audience, reticent to return to theaters, while young people preferred big-budget Marvel movies to a period musical. In Hollywoodese, the film “tanked.” On a cost of $100 million and $50 million in marketing, returns to 20th Century Studios would not even cover the publicity budget. Spielberg received acclaim for his semi-autobiographical, cinema-centric recreation of the 1950s, The Fabelmans (2022), but audiences were not interested in his fictionalized youthful moviemaking efforts and the financial results were the worst dating back to his first theatrical feature, The Sugarland Express (1974).

While Spielberg has proven he can bring in huge grosses with the right subject matter, he’s now in competition with big-budget superhero-themed, adrenaline-charged action thrillers made by an up-and-coming generation of directors. After 34 directorial efforts, the Spielberg imprimatur still carries weight in the entertainment world and, no doubt, he will always have projects in development.

In half a century, Clint Eastwood directed 39 motion pictures, most of which he produced and for which he won countless award nominations. Thirty-two of his last 35 directorial efforts were made for Warner Brothers, a long-term association not seen since the studio contract days. Once considered just another popular actor who tried his hand at directing, Eastwood honed his craft to a level for which he is not often given adequate credit. Some of his financially most successful films include Unforgiven (1992), A Perfect World (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Gran Torino (2008), and American Sniper (2014) - a career high world gross of $547 - at the age of 84!

After a legendary run as actor and director, with so many financial and award-winning critical successes, Eastwood’s most recent films, have not performed well. Sully (2016) and The Mule (2018) were moderate hits, but The 15:17 to Paris (2017), Richard Jewell (2019) and, most recently, Cry Macho (2021) were all considered flops. The last-mentioned even gave a taste of the “new attitude” at Warner Bros. after its merger with Discovery, as reported by The Wall Street Journal in May, 2022. David Zaslav, the head of the newly-merged companies was furious with executives for approving the $33 million budget for Cry Macho while expressing uncertainty about its chance for success. When told that this was about a 50-year relationship with the director, Zaslav shot back “It’s not show friends, it’s show business.” (The Zaslav administration further outraged the creative community when it shelved the nearly completed $90 million production Batgirl, preferring to take a tax write-off.) Clint Eastwood, at 94 years of age, has recently completed filming Juror #2, his 40th film as director, once again for Warner Bros. distribution.

There is no mistaking the impact Woody Allen had on audiences and other directors between 1966 and 2023. Writing and directing uproariously insightful comedies brimming with razor-sharp dialogue as well as dramas plumbing the psychological depths of characters, Allen’s films have been imitated but seldom equaled. In the 1970s he became a darling of critics and audiences with relatively low-cost productions like Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972), Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), Annie Hall (1977), and particularly Manhattan (1979) which ended with a then-impressive profit of $15.8 million and expanded his fan base.   

Although there were some movies that disappointed, Woody Allen’s films were filmed on tight medium-range budgets so that even the flops were not catastrophic. He not only had fans among moviegoers, studio executives at United Artists, Orion Pictures, Miramax, Fox Searchlight, and Sony Pictures believed in him as an artist, which extended his career through intermittent failures. Allen maintained his popularity into the 2000s with titles like Match Point (2005) and Midnight in Paris (2011), at $152 million worldwide, his biggest financial success. In 2013, much of his core audience evaporated when widespread allegations were made by his ex-wife Mia Farrow and son Ronan that he had sexually abused a step-daughter when she was very young. These revelations made certain plot points and lines of dialogue in earlier films retroactively cringeworthy to those familiar with his work. The Woody Allen name on a film became radioactive.

By 2017, Wonder Wheel, which was originally to be released theatrically was streamed on Netflix. The Wrap, an industry observer site reported about Allen’s most recent film, Rifkin’s Festival (2022): “MPI Media Group is handling distribution of the film as it did for Allen’s previous film A Rainy Day in New York, which had been returned to Allen after Amazon cancelled an $80 million multifilm production deal with Allen amidst #MeToo pressure. ‘There is no chance any studio is going to work with him,’ one producer told TheWrap last year. ‘No legit company is going to touch him — he is going to have to work with European financiers for the rest of his life.’” 3 In fact, Allen’s most recent film, the fairly well-reviewed but minimally seen Coup de Chance (2023), was financed and filmed in France in French. The Allen oeuvre now stands at 51 features, if one includes What’s Up Tiger Lily? (1966), actually a Japanese-made movie with re-dubbed comedic dialogue.

Unlike commercially-minded directors Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese quickly became a darling of the critics, much like Woody Allen, but with higher budgets and a greater degree of financial failure. His films could be critical and commercial successes like Taxi Driver (1978), with a $35 million world gross on a $1.9 million production cost, or critical successes and boxoffice flops like Raging Bull (1980) which cost $17 million and lost nearly $14 million.

Forever selecting challenging subjects, Scorsese’s career was as checkerboarded as his many moves from one studio to another to find financing. A surefire hit like The Color of Money (1986) starring red-hot Tom Cruise and Paul Newman was followed by the controversial The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) which, even on a moderate $7 million budget, was destined to create controversy and boycotts among America’s emerging Silent Majority. Nevertheless, Scorsese created a built-in fan base of critics and moviegoers, anxiously awaiting every subsequent project. With a taste for eclectic stories with very high budgets, he made a string of films that were championed by studios but yielded little profit like Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995), Gangs of New York (2002), and The Aviator (2004).  Mixed in with the occasional hits like Cape Fear (1991), The Departed (2006), and Shutter Island (2010) were large losses on The Age of Innocence (1993), Kundun (1997) and Bringing Out the Dead (1999), leaving combined red ink estimated at $80,000,000. Then came Hugo (2011), a complicated combination of 3-D live-action and computer graphics which cost a way over budget $156 million. Domestic grosses were dismal at $73 million and foreign countries (usually the savior of last resort) added only $112 million. Overall, after production, distribution, publicity and interest costs were figured, losses were at least $100 million, even with revenue from home video and streaming.

The Scorsese reputation for “important” movies was restored with The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and a career-high gross of $312 million, then once again extinguished with Silence (2016). Fans and critics awaited the return to the mob world of Goodfellas in The Irishman (2019). The much talked-about de-aging of actors Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel pushed production costs towards $159 million. This time it was Netflix that put up the money and streamed it exclusively on its service just months before Covid shut down the industry. For a director who had always been a champion of the theater-going experience, it was an odd and not-completely-desired venue for his film. Accessing the deep pockets of Apple, the then 79-year-old Scorsese was given $200 million to finance Killers of the Flower Moon, a 3½ hour epic of Oklahoma’s treatment of oil-rich Osage tribe members which was released to theaters but only took in a meager worldwide total of $157 million. With $100 million in Paramount Pictures marketing alone, the film could not possibly be profitable in its theatrical run. Apple, of course, can write down losses and stream it on Apple TV+. After 28 features (not including a substantial number of documentaries), the question remains whether there are more angels in the cinema-sphere to continue investing in Scorsese’s high-risk ventures.

Emerging from U.S.C. Cinema with a student film that caught Steven Spielberg’s attention, Robert Zemeckis was able to jump into directing features with an original script for I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978). An assignment for hire, Romancing the Stone (1984), was successful but a difficult experience and propelled Zemeckis to co-write a project he’d been considering for some time. Back to the Future (1985) ultimately turned into a billion-dollar grossing trilogy. Abandoning writing for full-time directing, there was the innovative computer graphics-enhanced fantasy/comedy Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), a major hit. Zemeckis once again embraced computer technology in the moderately successful Death Becomes Her (1992) but it was more effectively applied in Forrest Gump (1994) which was not only a financial smash (a $60 million cost and a world gross of $683 million), but also a winner of six Oscars including Best Director and Best Actor. He re-teamed with Forrest Gump’s Tom Hanks for Castaway (2000), the second highest grossing film of his career at $430 million, and another Oscar win for Tom Hanks.

Seduced by the technology of motion-capture, Zemeckis made three very high-budget films The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), and A Christmas Carol (2009) with losses from releases at approximately $250 million. Indicative of studio reticence to continue along this path, his next project, the Oscar-winning Flight (2012), was budgeted at reasonable $31 million, allowing for a profit. Then came the failures of The Walk (2015), Allied (2016), a World War II spy thriller starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, and Welcome to Marwen (2018) starring Steve Carell. Losses on all three were lower than his high-budget motion-capture films, but considerable nevertheless. Zemeckis’ next was The Witches (2020) starring Chris Rock and Anne Hathaway which, during the Covid crisis, was released on HBO Max. Disney+ financed and streamed his live-action/motion capture/animation remake of the classic Pinocchio to largely negative comparisons with the original.  His 22nd feature, the upcoming Here (2024) is supported by a cast including Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and screenwriter Eric Roth, all alumni of Forrest Gump. Sony is hoping lightning will again strike the Tri-Star Pictures release.

Another alumnus of U.S.C.’s film school, Ron Howard, after being in front of a motion picture camera since the age of five, determined to turn to directing. His low-budget action feature for B-producer Roger Corman Grand Theft Auto (1977) cost $600,000 and reportedly grossed $15 million. Busy with his acting work, it wasn’t until five years later that he directed Night Shift (1982), then Splash (1984), followed by Cocoon (1985). The latter two being major hits, Howard was suddenly elevated to the status of “A” director. He hit his stride with Parenthood (1989), a Steve Martin-starred family comedy which received two Oscar nominations and was a major hit, grossing $126 million on a $20 million production cost. It also was the beginning of a long-term relationship with Brian Grazer with whom he formed Imagine Entertainment.

Howard was elevated to high-budget/high-risk productions costing $40 million and upwards. There were disappointments like Backdraft (1990), Far and Away (1992), and The Paper (1994), which were more than made up for by Apollo 13 (1995), grossing $353 million after a cost of $52 million. He then encountered a near-complete $55 million wipeout with Edtv (1999). Jim Carrey helped restore Howard’s credibility in the high-cost but respectably successful How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000). No stranger to Oscar nominations and some wins in other categories for Splash, Cocoon, Parenthood and Apollo 13, Howard’s Best Director win came with A Beautiful Mind (2001), also a huge financial success.  

Subsequent years were characterized by the major failures of The Missing (2003), Cinderella Man (2005), Frost/Nixon (2008), Dilemma (2011), Rush (2013), In the Heart of the Sea (2015) and a Disney entry, Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). This Han Solo origin story, at a budget-busting $275 million, returned only $393 million in gross revenues, representing an approximate loss of $175 million and a real dent in one of Disney’s most valuable assets. The saving grace of Howard’s career during this period was the canny optioning of three books by Dan Brown through Imagine Entertainment. Without the success of The DaVinci Code (2006), Angels & Demons (2009) and Inferno (2016), all with Tom Hanks, Howard’s career would have looked somewhat different. Hillbilly Elegy (2020), based on the J.D. Vance bestseller, followed Martin Scorsese’s example and was financed for streaming on Netflix. The $55 million-budgeted Thirteen Lives (2022) was originally intended for a theatrical release by the reconfigured M.G.M., but a sale of the company to Amazon limited the release window to one week before it showed up on Amazon Prime. With 27 credits, many quite successful, Howard’s relative “youth” gives him time to choose his next projects.

Ridley Scott is probably one of the most admired and skilled directors of the past fifty years. Wowing sci-fi fans with Alien (1979), only his second feature film, he opened a new chapter of the genre with an A-budget adult entry. Following up that success with Blade Runner (1982) he established himself as a visionary creator, but that film’s financial failure did not keep the movie from gaining a cult following. Constantly changing genres, the Scott style of story-telling continued with mixed results. Of course, there were intermittent global blockbusters; Gladiator (2000) with $465 million, Hannibal (2001), American Gangster (2007), Prometheus (2012), and The Martian (2015), a career high of $630 million on a cost of $108 million. There were out and out flops; Legend (1985), Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), White Squall (1996), Matchstick Men (2003), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), and A Good Year (2006). Then there were the moderate returns that probably resulted in a breakeven with income from ancillary markets like home video; Black Rain (1989), G.I. Jane (1997), Body of Lies (2008), Robin Hood (2010), Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), and Alien: Covenant (2017). Occasionally there was critical acclaim in place of a financial bonanza; Thelma and Louise (1991), Black Hawk Down (2001). Scott, like film-makers previously mentioned, established himself as a major director upon whom studio executives were willing to risk large budgets.

However, Scott’s most recent films have been garnering spectacularly poor results, either critically or financially. Adding to the dismal grosses of The Last Duel (2017), $30 million worldwide on a $100 million cost excluding marketing, are All the Money in the World (2017), House of Gucci (2021) which set off critical howls, and the Apple TV+ financed $200 million Napoleon (2023), with a worldwide theatrical return of $216.6 million. Once again, this deep-pocketed company can balance a loss with streaming revenue. At age 86, the ever-energetic director is currently in post-production on his 28th film, Gladiator II, for release in 2024. 

Reviewing the careers of these long-haul directors, it’s obvious that their recent output has suffered a fate similar to the group of aging directors who were phased out between 1970 and 1982. However, like their predecessors, their legacy films will be viewed and examined closely by generations of film buffs in decades to come.

Other directors with notable cinematic contributions over the past 20-30 years who could reach a golden five decades include Michael Bay, Kathryn Bigelow, Shane Black, Danny Boyle, Kenneth Branagh, Tim Burton, James Cameron, Jane Campion, Joel and Ethan Coen, Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, Roland Emmerich, Jon Favreau, David Fincher, Peter Jackson, Richard Linklater, James Mangold, Shawn Levy, Doug Liman, Baz Luhrmann, Rob Marshall, Christopher Nolan, Todd Phillips, M. Night Shyamalan, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Joss Whedon among others. But what does the future hold for them and directors who have only recently entered the ring? Will they be given the opportunities to match the outgoing generation?

During the Covid pandemic of 2021-2022, streaming platforms filled the public entertainment void left by shuttered theaters and upended a century-old production/exhibition model. Netflix led the way forging a new empire. To boost subscriptions for their newly minted streaming service, Disney bypassed theatrical distribution completely for animated features with a total production cost of $550 million, Soul (2021), Luca (2021) and Turning Red (2022). 20th Century Studios sold The Woman in the Window (2021) directly to Netflix and Searchlight received almost all of its exposure for The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) through streaming. Moviegoing viewers turned to the new platforms and reached a global audience of one billion subscribers in 2020 for Netflix, Warner-HBO/Max, Comcast/Universal and Disney+.   

When theaters finally re-opened in May, 2021, big-budget productions began to haltingly reappear, but they were simultaneously available through pay-per-view streaming, a once unimaginable turn-of-events. Wonder Woman 1984 and Dune on HBO Max, Kong Vs. Godzilla on Universal/Comcast, Jungle Cruise and Black Widow on Disney+ were available day-and-date with their theatrical release. With previous norms shattered, producers, distributors and exhibitors were wondering, what is the future of the moviegoing experience?

Directors who hoped for a worldwide theatergoing audience were denied that goal. “Releasing movies theatrically is very important within the creative community. So as the companies are getting into larger, more compelling commercial films, having a theatrical release is also a way to attract top talent.” 4 Directors, cognizant of the magic of watching a movie from beginning to end in a darkened auditorium with a giant screen cannot rejoice when their efforts are seen in uncontrolled settings like living rooms where they can be paused, stopped and skipped through. Even taken with a dose of skepticism, a 2019 biometric study suggests that; “‘In-theatre viewing has shown to be more emotionally and neuro-physiologically engaging for moviegoers,’ says Michelle Niedziela, vice president of research & innovation at HCD Research.” 5 Perhaps an equilibrium will eventually be found if influential directors, in the mold of movie lovers Spielberg and Scorsese, tire of having their newest work viewed on screens inches wide and insist on the inclusion of a compulsory theatrical window (as directors have done in France) à la Apple production deals for Napoleon, Killers of the Flower Moon and Fly Me to the Moon.

As Netflix has achieved dominance in the streaming arena with 277.65 million subscribers, traditional studios have scaled back their efforts to compete and once again are putting their resources into the traditional exhibition route. After an upswing in theater attendance during the summer of 2023 with the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, exhibitors were in the doldrums with disappointing 2024 returns from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Fall Guy, and Fly Me to the Moon. Some hope has been restored with Inside Out 2, Despicable Me 4, and Deadpool & Wolverine. Among the major studios, releases in 2024 will only total 73 versus 102 in 2019. Independent distributors have taken up some of the slack and provided opportunities for new directors. However, their releases do not bring in the crowds needed to fill the multiplexes owned by AMC, Regal Theaters and Cinemark the three largest, heavily indebted chains, currently comprising 18,578 screens. If they cut back on venues, more moviegoers will turn to streaming new films on their large-screen Smart TVs, iPads, or (worse) Smartphones, further weakening producers and exhibitors.

Now, come the question marks writ large; How many of recently prominent directors Wes Ball, Ryan Coogler, Greta Gerwig, Bong Joon Ho, David Leitch, Christopher McQuarrie, Olivia Newman, Jordan Peele, Matt Reeves, Colin Trevorrow, Denis Villeneuve, Taika Waititi, Chloé Zhao will maintain their careers to mid-21st century? Will they have hybrid trajectories, alternating between theatrical releases and streaming platforms? Decades from now, will cinephiles be able to compile a list of seven major directors at their 50-year milestones?

Will Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO/Max, Amazon Prime continue to corral the most accomplished talents away from the traditional marketplace with their very generous budgets? How will these exclusively streamed films be disseminated to the unsubscribed moviegoing public? Will streaming finally win out over theatrical exhibition in a war of attrition with theater chains starved for product? Will there be a standardized, transparent data collection to measure the success of a streamed film? Will studios step in to help save exhibition by buying up chains or creating new ones following a 2020 reversal of a 72-year-old federal ban on theater ownership? Or will the once readily available communal activity of going to movies just be a 20th century phenomenon?   

Notes

1. For background, check out Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind, Simon & Schuster, 1998 ↩
2. All figures unadjusted for ticket inflation ↩
3. [1] January 20, 2022 ↩
4. Ryan Faunder, Los Angeles Times, June 1, 2022 ↩
5. Movies in Theaters a Better Experience Study Shows, Digital Cinema Report, Oct. 22, 2019 ↩

Volume 28, Issue 7 / July 2024 Essays   auteur theory   film history   hollywood