From Tim Burton's "Jurassic Park" To Spielberg's "Harry Potter": 11 Films That Almost Had Completely Different Directors

Dick Richards wasn't the producer's first pick for the director of Jaws. Originally, John Sturges – the man behind The Old Man and the Sea – was meant to direct the movie, before the studios moved onto Richards. The director, who has also made Heat and Tootsie, landed the gig because of his Western movie The Culpepper Cattle Co., and all seemed to be going well. However, he was fired from the movie for a hilarious reason: he kept calling the shark a whale, and it drove the film's producers up the wall. Producer Richard Zanuck says that "Richards went on to tell more about how he would approach the story, and again he said, ‘Then when the whale attacks the boat…’ and I shouted, ‘Shark! Shark!’…When lunch was over, we called Medavoy and said, ‘Everything went great, but we want to get rid of the director because he thinks it’s a whale!'”. 

Well, good news for Spielberg, I guess...