Bad Directors: Gore Verbinski 6

Here we have another career that started with a surplus of promise only to slowly give way to lazy efforts and pandering to the lowest common denominator. Verbinski's initial success came with such movies like Mouse Hunt, The Mexican and a little horror movie called The Ring -- which kick-started the J-horror craze that lasted for the better part of the aughts. But it was a pirate movie based on a Disney ride that made Verbinski one of Hollywood's biggest blockbuster directors. With a go-for-broke performance from Johnny Depp and some genuinely rousing action setpieces, Pirates of the Caribbean launched an insanely lucrative franchise for Disney. In terms of quality, however, each Pirates sequel was a study in diminishing returns. Verbinski eventually handed over the reigns to Rob Marshall for the fourth awful installment so he could focus on Rango, which is essentially the cartoon version of Johnny Depp in an animated Western. And while critics enjoyed this tired mishmash of recycled action tropes, they had their knives out for last year's Lone Ranger adaptation, which wound up being a huge box-office disaster. Disney lost so much money on The Lone Ranger that Verbinski's next project, a remake of the mystery thriller Clue has been shelved indefinitely. Here's hoping Verbinski finds some new ways to tell a story that don't rely exclusively on Johnny Depp's exaggerated facial gestures.