You know the directors I'm talking about. The ones who were so popular and well known that studios would use their name to sell the movie as much as the concept to sell the movie. In the 80's you had Spielberg, Kubrick, Carpenter, Craven and Scott. In the 90's you had Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Then when the 2000's hit it pretty much stopped with really only Christopher Nolan and JJ Abrams seeming to fall under the category now.

I'm guessing that a lot of this has to do with directors becoming workhorses for studios more then being able to do their own thing and stick out in the era of rising budgets and marketing costs.

I would say yes because using a directors name can still be a viable marketing tactic in the right scenario. At this point it would be a director that does something original and hits a home run with it. After that the studios will use his/her name to sell the movie. I mean, shit, they still use M. Night's name to sell movies. So I'm sure someone else will come along and fit the bill.

In the bigger picture though, Hollywood is clearly leaning on franchises these days and using plug and play directors for it, so yes, it's a lot harder for a fresh director to get the same exposure as it was in the past.

I'd say after two consecutive Best Director Oscars that Alejandro Iñárritu has reached that level of director-fame. I think his friend and colleague Alfonso Cuarón is there as well. And after this year's Oscars, Damien Chazelle might be the next big-name director.
And while there isn't a ton of respect for directors of tent-pole Blockbusters, Rian Johnson might get there if this next Star Wars film is as good as we hope it is.

Robert Rodriguez is a superstar director?

If Blade Runner 2049 is a success it will be Denis Villeneuve.

I was going to say exactly this.

Since we have Christopher Nolan we don't really need other directors. Just have him direct everything.

My underlying question is will any of these young superstar directors reach a point where major studios will back off and let them create the art they are capable of? There are cadres of auteurs out there, but the current studio pattern is to hire them and then meddle.

Yeah, exactly. We will always have great directors, ones that will bring people into the theaters.

I just don't know -- thanks to the importance of tent-pole features -- if we will again have another director whose singular vision will be able to bring an original universe to the masses the way George Lucas did with Star Wars, Spielberg did with Close Encounters and ET, James Cameron did with Terminator, Ridley Scott did with Alien and The Wachowskis did with The Matrix.
It's been a long time since we've seen that level of auteurship in an immensely popular film. Everything these days (in the Blockbuster field) is based on existing IP.

We have Zack Snyder, the most brilliant...sorry, couldn't possibly finish this sentence...

Sure. He has final cut until the end of his days. He changed the rules with El Mariachi. Whether his films have depth (they don't) they're fun. He's got merit.



Guillermo del Toro is another director. Superstar? Sure, superstar of genre filmmaking. Why not.

I will see a David Fincher movie, regardless of the subject matter, purely because of his involvement.

Yes, Fincher and I would say Inarratu and even del Toro, Cronenberg is still an attention getter are newer superstars. I would argue to say Villenuve is already a bit name and star will only get brighter. Abrams, Whedon, maybe Edgar Wright, certainly Jon Favreau is an audience getter and I still think Blomkamp is going to be in upper echelon soon. Chazele is one to have eye on too...

Another vote for Fincher. I lost interest in Tarantino years ago. The only other "automatically get my ass in a seat" director is Lynch and he hasn't done shit in years.

Kubrick was a lot of things, but he wasn't an 80s director. The Shining was released in 80 but filmed in 78. He basically had one 80s film in Full Metal Jacket and for whatever its merits, it was his only real output of the decade.

Another vote for Villeneuve. I'm not a big fan of Enemy but everything else I've seen from him has been great!

I'll watch anything by Sam Mendes and for horror fans, James Wan seems to be have a lot of clout at the moment.

It isn't an original property, but a lot of what makes Guardians of the Galaxy successful is pure James Gunn. I'm personally very excited to see what he does post Guardians now that it's shown that he can handle a big budget picture.

I dont think so because the movie business is all about sequels and big budget movies these days. Now I know that the 1980's started the sequel trend, but there were still original movies that were just as popular. Now all of the box office hits are pretty much sequels.

In a sense, every director will get George Lucased. What I mean is Lucas stuck with Star Wars, because it was a no brainier for making $$$, so we never saw that THX/American Graffiti director again.

Yes there are great directors out there, but the shadow of blockbuster movies pervades any originality these days.

No

Hopefully modern auteurs like Nicolas Winding Refn, Lars Von Trier, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steve McQueen, Gaspar Noe, etc. keep doing what they do and avoid the big studios.

When I think SUPERSTAR director, the first name that comes to mind is Bruce McCulloch.

My formative filmgoing occurred in the years when three or four generations of superstar directors were overlapping: John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Capra, Billy Wilder, William Wyler, John Huston, Robert Aldrich, Don Siegel, Sam Peckinpah, Stanley Kubrick, John Frankenheimer, Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet, etc., not to mention from overseas, Kurosawa, Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni, Bergman, Bunuel, Truffaut, Godard, Resnais, Chabrol, Fassbinder, et al, followed by the emergence of the film school generation: Scorsese, Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, De Palma, etc.

20-odd years later: Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Tim Burton, John Woo, Hayao Miyazaki, Tarantino, plus the remnants of the film school generation, chiefly Spielberg and Scorsese.

Today: Tarantino and Spielberg. And that's IT! No other directors today have spots in the public imagination the way these two guys do, Spielberg somewhat less so than Tarantino. Yes, film buffs, fanboys and participants in forums like this one can wax eloquent about Fincher, del Toro, Nolan, Anderson (either one), Abrams, Wheedon, et al, but the average moviegoer who's a little more savvy than most is more likely to know Tarantino and Spielberg...and maybe Nolan, but not the rest of them. My daughter, a fan girl par excellence, will wax rhapsodic about Abrams and Wheedon, but she's a regular at Comic Con (and my offspring), so she'll be savvier than most, but most of her peers won't know all these names. Or if they do, they won't care much.

A superstar director is someone who attracts audiences by his (or her) name alone, commanding a following that will see anything they direct. The only director who fits that bill for me today who's still making films regularly is Tarantino.

I agree with you for the most part except that I don't think Spielberg is much of a box-office draw at this point in his career. Sure, the general public still know who he is, but they're not going out of their way to see his movies. I'd actually put Nolan at #2 behind Tarantino at this point. The thing holding Nolan back is that he's not much of a public personality in the way that Tarantino, or even Spielberg is. I also feel like his star is going to fade the further we get from the Batman movies. Abrams is probably next on the list, but it's not like people are really paying money to go see a JJ Abrams movie. He's just been lucky enough to have his name attached to some mega-brands.

As for all the other names that have been brought up, I see a lot of fine directors, but none that are anywhere near superstar status in the way that I think the OP intended. I like Denis Villeneuve as much as the next guy, but anyone who thinks he's someone whose name will become a boxoffice draw with the general public is crazy.

So, I suppose Eli Roth doesn't fall into this category right?

Cool...just checking.