What are some directors movies that never got picked up?
 

In a film school course I took, aspiring to be a director myself, I was told that for most feature film directors who made it successfully, for a lot of them, they probably made 10 bad films before one got picked up for distribution.

However, is there a way I could find movies by directors that did not get picked up by distribution. It would be very interesting to see a failure of a successful or even famous director that's made it, but are there any ones out there that didn't make it, or get distribution by any of them?

Re: What are some directors movies that never got picked up?
 

Are you specifically looking for undistributed "bad films" by directors who later became famous/successful? Or will any undistributed film by them do?

Sidenote: Maybe it's just the way you worded it, but it sounds like the prof who told you that was implying films only fail to get distribution because they're bad, which is quite unfortunate to hear. (Or even worse, implying film distribution is a good metric of a film's value.)

Didn't Kubrick try to destroy all copies of his first film (Fear and Desire) cause he hated it so much? I don't think that would make it to distribution

He didn't completely succeed in destroying it, so you can still watch it.

Re: What are some directors movies that never got picked up?
 

I meant movies that are not well made at all specifically, cause the directors still had to make mistakes and learn.

Re: What are some directors movies that never got picked up?
 

The way I interpreted it was that these directors' earliest films are their student-level ones that will obviously look very rough and amateurish next to their more well-known work. I figured it was meant to be an encouraging statement to remind would-be filmmakers that their first attempts at making films are going to be rough so the idea is not to get discouraged because their first efforts aren't immediately perfect, let alone worthy of getting picked up for distribution (especially if they're student films).

Re: What are some directors movies that never got picked up?
 

Oh okay, that makes sense. Can you find student films of famous directors though then anywhere?

Re: What are some directors movies that never got picked up?
 

Not really, I think it varies from director to director. The only one I can think of is Scorsese and I only know that for sure because I have seen one of his student shorts.

Re: What are some directors movies that never got picked up?
 

I saw Boxcar Bertha by Scorsese, and I thought it really wasn't that good, at least on a first viewing, but that one still got distribution of course.