Directors/Actors who abandon movies mid production
 

Anyone know of movies where the Director or Actor/s have left part way through production of their own accord? Figured it would be interesting to discuss the impact it has on those movies.

I know David Fincher was working on Lords of Dogtown with Roger Avery scripting it, and then left it for another director and writer. Don't know how it affected the movie since I haven't seen it but it's been a long time since anyones seen a movie by Fincher so I'm sure people were dissapointed.

Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett also left The Fountain and that was widely reported, and now we have Hugh Jackman and Racheal Weisz (or is it Monica Bellucci?) in the lead roles. That movie has been through a massive roller coaster so it will be interesting to watch when it comes out.

Guy Ritchie also left Layer Cake to do Revolver and we all know how that went.

abandoned or fired... ;)

if we discuss fired... back to the future is a great example

Specifics? I thought Zemeckis did all three of them.

Zemeckis did, but Eric Stoltz didn't! :)

MATT

I really don't know the whole story but wasn't Donner fired from Superman II

then there are those actors who have died before the filming ends

- Oliver Reed (Gladiator)
- Bela Lugosi (Plan 9 from Outer Space) - his replacement actually paraded around his scenes with his cape obscuring half of his face.

You forgot to put Bruce Lee died before (The Game of Death) was completed he would have been in the biggest martial arts actor to date.

No I meant leaving by their own accord. Like I said in the original post. Firing happens a lot and usually for a deserved reason (except for Donner and superman from what I gather) but when they leave of their own free will it usually means they thought the movie was gonna stink, and so it's interesting to see that movie be a better film than the one the Director/Actor left it for. Case in point with the Guy Ritchie/Layer Cake example.

yeah, sorry I digressed from the original intent of this thread/topic - sorry there.

I can't remember the original director's name of The Time Machine with Guy Pierce, but didn't Gore Verbinski have to come in and finish that mess because the original director cracked up?

Jean Rochefort left "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" because of injuries.

Gore Verbinski took over for Simon Wells.

Yep. I'm eagerly awaiting his cut of Superman II that's supposed to be coming out this fall. The more I think about specific scenes in Lester's cut, the less I like it.

but from what I remember from the docu: Look Up in the Sky! - he only shot 70% of Superman II, it's gonna be very interesting to see what his cut will look like, if plot holes exist and other inconsistencies.

You can get a good idea of what Donner shot HERE.

I freakin' love Wikipedia! :D

oops I was off by 5%

thanks for the link.

You can add Brandon to that list. Anyways, here's a link to pics of Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly

http://www.bttf.com/cgi-bin/ImageFol...as_Marty_McFly

Spartacus-Anthony Mann to Kubrick
Island of Dr. Moreau-Richard Stanley to Frankenheimer
Drunken Master II-Lau Kar Leung to Jackie Chan

Well, not a film, but Genevieve Bujold left ST:V while filming the pilot. Kate Mulgrew was hired as her replacement. I have Bujold's camera test with her Starfleet uniform. The stuff she shot tho disappeared from the post production vault before I could see it. There were already 7 episodes in the can by the time I started there.

I'm not sure if the following were of their own accord as much as it was more due to illness/injury and the studio didn't want to chance it so they recast while the films ramped into production.

Nicole Kidman -> Jodi Foster... Panic Room
Anne Brancroft -> Cloris Leachman... Spanglish

All the examples in the original post are of people leaving a film in PRE-production, not "mid production", which would be considered plain ol' "production".

Wasn't there some controversy during American History X? Something like Edward Norton decided to cut the final film his way and not the director?