Movies Not Directed by Who You Think They Are…
That title isn’t great. But I’m not sure what else to call this article. Anyways. Something that seems to be confusing a lot of people recently is what a director does. Some of the items that people may attribute to a director are actually usually aligned to a producer, writer, cinematographer, editor, or one of the many other people on a movie set. This confusion also often leads to films getting attributed to the wrong directors, so in this list we’ll look at a handful of films that are oft attributed to the wrong person.
‘Him’ - Directed by Justin Tipping, believed to be directed by Jordan Peele. This 2025 psychological sports horror film is a great example of the audience being purposefully mislead by a studio & marketing. All due respect to director Justin Tipping, people aren’t familiar with his name. But one of the great modern directors Jordan Peele? Now that brings eyes to a movie & will put butts in seats. This is one of many entries here where you really can’t blame the audience, because Peele’s name was literally everywhere on the marketing for this movie. Peele is actually a producer of the film, so his actual creative impact is a little harder to measure. Funny enough this isn’t the first time this happened with Peele as many also directed 2021’s ‘Candyman.’ That film was directed by Nia DeCosta, though it was written & produced by Peele. Another thing that seems to confuse folks online earlier this year was a report that Peele’s production company was in the bidding war for ‘Weapons’ though they didn’t get it. This caused many online to think that Peele was in the running to direct the film, but alas Zach Cregger was always at the helm.
‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ - Directed by Henry Selick, believed to be directed by Tim Burton. Another example of the marketing fooling the audience. This film is marketed & sometimes even known as ‘Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas’ so it’s hard to blame anyone for being confused. Henry Selick is one of the most prominent stop motion directors, but not a household name like Tim Burton. Even more confusingly, Burton wasn’t even a producer or writer. The reason the film is credited to him is because the original idea for the film & story originated with Burton. Another Selick directed film, ‘Coraline’ is also attributed to Burton, though as far as I know, he had no involvement at all with that film.
‘The Empire Strikes Back’ & ‘Return of the Jedi’ - Directed by Irvin Kershner & Richard Marquand, respectively, believed to be directed by George Lucas. I’m a decently informed fan of the ‘Star Wars’ franchise, but in no world would I have ever been able to tell you Irvin Kershner directed the sequel to George Lucas’s original film. Now listen, the story still came from Lucas, who did direct the original film & all three prequels, but on the directing side, he took a step back for the second two thirds of the original films. Another film sometimes credited to Lucas is ‘Willow’ which he did pen the story for, but was actually directed by Ron Howard.
Various John Hughes films - Some films that may come to mind when you think of John Hughes include the National Lampoon Vacation films, the ‘Home Alone’ movies, ‘Pretty in Pink,’ ‘Beethoven,’ & ‘Flubber.’ Confusingly, Hughes actually didn’t direct a single one of these movies. He did write the scripts for all of them & produced some as well, but a variety of different directors were brought in to lead on set.
‘From Dusk till Dawn’ - Directed by Robert Rodriguez, believed to be directed by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino collaborated with Rodriguez a few times throughout his career, including on this film. Tarantino wrote the film & also played one of the lead roles, but wasn’t actually the director on this one. If you follow Tarantino at all, you know he’s set this weird rule for himself that he can only direct 10 films (we’ll see what that 10th film eventually ends up being) and creates some alternatives to skirt around this made up rule. Those include just writing the films, producing them, or serving in some other creative capacity.
‘Cloverfield’ - Directed by Matt Reeves, believed to be directed by J. J. Abrams. To date, Abrams has actually only directed 6 films, with 1 more in production now. But he’s an extremely prominent producer & name, so his name often gets thrown around as the director on films he produced. He was a writer on ‘Armageddon’ & produced all three ‘Cloverfield’ films, entries 4-6 in the ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise, ‘Star Trek Beyond,’ & executive produced ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi.’ His name sometimes gets thrown in the ring as the director of these, and while is impact is surely there, someone else sat in the director’s chair. My favorite contribution of Abrams’ will always be the creation of ‘Lost,’ because that show rocks.
This isn’t a top 10 list, because I’m struggling to come up with 10 good examples of this. But I’ll end with the man who confuses the most people, in due part to the fact he’s the most prominent director of all-time. Some of the films famously directed by Steven Spielberg are ‘Jaws,’ the first four ‘Indiana Jones’ films, the first two ‘Jurassic Park films, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’ ‘Hook,’ ‘Schindler’s List,’ ‘E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,’ ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ ‘Lincoln,’ and many other extremely popular films. Spielberg is perhaps an even more prominent producer than director, with an absurd amount of producing credits. Some films he produced that are often thought of as directing credits of his include: ‘Poltergeist,’ ‘The Goonies,’ ‘Gremlins,’ ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit,’ ‘Back to the Future,’ ‘Twister,’ ‘Men in Black,’ ‘Transformers,’ the ‘Jurassic World’ films, & ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.’ And that’s just a small part of his filmography. The goat.
