Indie directors find mixed success with blockbusters

Handing big-budget films to small-time directors can be a crapshoot.

In the past few years, studios have increasingly called on less-experienced filmmakers to direct some of their highest profile movies. Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kong: Skull Island), Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman) and Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok) each helmed one to three independent features before they were enlisted for some of next year's most-anticipated franchise entries. Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World), Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) and Rian Johnson (Looper) were similarly unknown before they graduated to Hollywood tent-poles, which now include a trio of Star Wars installments led by each.

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But for every success story, there's a David Lowery, whose Pete's Dragon struggled over the weekend with only $21.5 million, despite glowing reviews (86% positive on Rotten Tomatoes) and audience reception (an "A" CinemaScore). Before signing on to the $65-million, PG-rated adventure — which reimagines Disney's 1977 animated musical of the same name, and stars Robert Redford and Bryce Dallas Howard — Lowery's biggest film was the understated 2013 drama Ain't Them Bodies Saints, budgeted at a mere $4 million.

With Pete, "I wanted to do something small and intimate, and not predicated on spectacle," says Lowery, whose next Disney project is a live-action Peter Pan remake. "I wanted the stakes to be very small, so even when you have a CGI dragon breathing fire, it's not as grand as it might be in another movie."

That Pete failed to take flight is a head-scratcher to comScore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian, who figured "that August would be the perfect time to have a movie that was a little different and didn't have the look and feel of a $200-million film." But with minimal marketing, soft social media buzz and a crowded marketplace,  "it may not have been on people's radar to the degree it would've needed to generate bigger box office."

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Despite Pete's stumbles, Lowery has still had a smoother transition to studio fare than other indie filmmakers, who until recent hires such as Selma's Ava DuVernay with A Wrinkle in Time and Creed's Ryan Coogler with Black Panther, have mostly been white men. (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb failed to spin the Amazing Spider-Man franchise into the critical and commercial juggernauts that Sony Pictures had anticipated. The character was yanked from him after two movies and will be rebooted in next year's Spider-Man: Homecoming by Jon Watts, whose only prior credits are the low-budget Clown and Cop Car.

Josh Trank was also tipped to join the A-list after his 2012 sleeper hit Chronicle, but abruptly left a Star Wars spinoff last summer and bombed with Fantastic Four months later. In a since-deleted tweet, Trank said that Fantastic "would've received great reviews" had the studio not interfered with his version of the movie — a predicament that many indie directors find themselves in when navigating bigger-budget projects.

"A less-established filmmaker is a lot more prone to going with the flow, playing nice and not pushing back in a way that a Christopher Nolan would," says Kate Erbland, film editor at Indiewire.com. Studios "want new voices and creativity, but a lot of the time, that gets lost along the way and it shifts back into studio control and the status quo."

Hollywood executives will continue to hire newcomers, though, because "they don't have to pay them as much as someone who's had multiple blockbusters," says Jeff Bock, box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. With any luck, "they might be the next Spielberg and go on to be really good at helming blockbusters. You're getting someone who has a lot of potential and you're getting them at a good rate."