While the director of a movie steers the ship during production and is responsible for bringing their creative vision to life, they can easily be overruled by producers and those who are funding the movie. That's called studio interference, and it can often cause friction between the director and the studio, leading the director to sometimes completely abandon the movie.
There are a handful of times where this fallout has been well-documented and resulted in the filmmaker speaking negatively of their own creation. And, interestingly, there are also times when the filmmaker has had complete control and has delivered a classic movie, but over the years, has grown to wonder why anybody likes it.
David O. Russell (Accidental Love)
David O. Russell is one of the most celebrated filmmakers working today, but that wasn't always the case. While he consistently released one Academy Award-nominated dramedy after the next, it took him a while to find his voice in the 2000s. And Accidental Love was the perfect example of that, even though the car crash that was the result wasn't entirely his fault.
According to The Guardian, O. Russell worked on the movie in 2008, which had the working title Nailed, and it was about a politician who falls in love with a quirky waitress who has a nail stuck in her head. The director got so sick of the production problems, such as funding falling through and the crew not getting paid, that he completely abandoned the project. It was finally completed without the filmmaker's input in 2015, and it's credited to Stephen Greene, a fake name used by directors who want to distance themselves from movies.
David Fincher (Alien 3)
After the first two movies in the series that have become classics, the franchise was handed down to the visionary director David Fincher, but he was a first-time director at the time. Fincher has been incredibly vocal about his experience with the torturous studio system during the production. In an interview with The Guardian, Fincher mentioned that he "got fired off it three times and I had to fight for every single thing. No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me."
The movie does have a lot of fans, and it is nowhere near as bad as Fincher thinks it is. And there is a chance for it to be restored to the director's original vision, but, unfortunately, he has absolutely no interest in revisiting what felt like hell for him. However, though fans will never see a director's cut, there is the Alien 3 "Assembly Cut," which is as close to Fincher's original vision as possible.
Michael Bay (Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen)
It's surprising to read that Michael Bay hates a Transformers movie, as the franchise has become the director's bread and butter, and he singlehandedly turned a bunch of toys into a four-billion-dollar-grossing movie series. On top of that, he was even willing to direct two more movies in the series after his terrible experience producing Revenge of the Fallen.
Nevertheless, according to The Hollywood Reporter, while the movie was critically scathed, Bay was the first to slam the movie, calling his own project "crap." The director blames the 2008 Writers' Strike as the reason for its failure, and he explains that he started producing the movie when he only had 14 pages of a story.
Joel Schumacher (Batman & Robin)
Joel Schumacher has apologized profusely for the universally hated Batman & Robin, most recently in an interview with Vice. The filmmaker even wanted to direct a follow-up to the 1997 movie as a way to redeem himself and deliver a movie that audiences actually liked.
However, between the world-building and the homages to the original Adam West Batman, there are ways Batman & Robin is underrated. Not only that, but Schumacher's previous Batman movie, Batman Forever, was a subject of studio interference, and there are some amazing deleted scenes.
Tony Kaye (American History X)
Just like how O. Russell did with Accidental Love, Tony Kaye used a pseudonym when American History X was theatrically released, as he wanted no connection with the final product. He even tried to use the alias "Humpty Dumpty." According to The Guardian, Kaye completely disowned the film because disliked the way it was edited.
According to Kaye, the studio banned him from the editing room. Instead, it let the star of the movie, Edward Norton, get involved in the editing process. However, unlike other movies that are hated by their directors, which are universally hated and, at most, mediocre, American History X is a classic. And there's no knowing whether Kaye's cut would have been better or worse.
Woody Allen (Annie Hall)
Annie Hall is another classic movie, and it's even one of Elizabeth Olsen's favorite movies, but it isn't that great in the eyes of the director. While saying that Woody Allen "hates" the movie is an exaggeration, he's very critical of it and doesn't understand why people like it.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Allen isn't a fan of the 1977 movie, saying that "For some reason, that film is very likable," It isn't just Annie Hall that the writer-director doesn't like, but Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters too, all of which are Allen's most beloved movies.
Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World)
Alan Taylor had a rough few years in the early 2010s, as he directed both Thor: The Dark World and Terminator Genisys, both of which weren't received very well by either critics or fans. It seems as if Taylor isn't exactly fond of them either. According to SlashFilm, the director explained that he essentially struggled to combine his vision of where to take Thor with the demands of the studio, and that's what led to the very messy and convoluted 2013 movie.
And with the one-two punch of that and Terminator Genisys, the director had "lost the will to make movies." However, he did overcome that with the newly released The Many Saints of Newark, one of the best gangster movies of the past few years.
David Lynch (Dune)
Dune is nominated for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards, but the property has had a rocky history in the movie industry before it started receiving such accolades. Before Denis Villeneuve's masterpiece, Alejandro Jodorowsky attempted to adapt the sci-fi novel, and before that, David Lynch directed a very strange version of it in the 1980s.
According to IndieWire, David Lynch thinks his film is "a huge sadness in my life," and it again comes to not having the final say or the final cut. And that's partly why the movie is totally incoherent, as the original cut of the movie was four hours long.
Josh Trank (Fantastic Four)
According to Den of Geek, Josh Trank had been offered huge projects like Venom and a movie adaptation of the celebrated video game, Shadow of the Colossus. Unfortunately, it seems like all of those offers are now off the table after the failure of Fantastic Four.
Trank is the movie's biggest critic, and he hates the final result of the movie. The director, like many of the others, blames studio interference for how the film turned out, but he has also admitted that it was "ambitious for me to impose such a personal take on the Fantastic Four." Nevertheless, fans are still holding out hope for a "Trank cut."