The news that the original director of a football movie set in the North-East has been replaced makes it just the lastest in a series of films to have suffered problems at the helm. Steve Pratt reports.

When the £55m football movie Goal! was launched in Newcastle in March, one key figure was missing from the line-up at St James's Park - director Michael Winterbottom. He'll also be absent when principal photography begins in November after parting company with the production over "creative differences".

The launch confirmed that Newcastle United had beaten Premiership rivals to win a starring role in the first of a planned film trilogy following the fortunes of a soccer-mad American Latino boy. Now, as Hollywood comes to Toon, another Brit, Danny Cannon, will be in the director's chair.

Winterbottom has joined the elite list of directors who've left projects prematurely, sometimes willingly, sometimes forcibly. Not so much "Lights, camera, action" as "Lights, camera, please leave the set".

Not so much sacked or fired - words that won't pass the lips of the producer - but because of those "creative differences". Roughly translated, that means the director's ideas are at odds with those of the producers or money men.

As Goal! producer Mike Jefferies says of Cannon: "I have no doubt he will deliver the movie we have all wanted to make - one which celebrates the journey of an underdog through the world of the beautiful game."

The implication is clear: Winterbottom didn't want to make that movie, he had other ideas. This was hardly surprising to anyone with a knowledge of his past work. Even with films like 24-Hour Party People with Steve Coogan and Jude with Kate Winslet, he has inclined towards independent, art house fare rather than commercial mainstream movies.

Along with the announcement of a new director come plans to add big Hollywood names to the cast which will continue to be headed by Mexican actor Diego Luna as soccer star Santiago.

The producers couldn't afford to get Goal! wrong as there's much at stake with two more films planned as Santiago moves from Newcastle to Real Madrid, with the final chapter set during the 2006 World Cup. Cannon is seen as a safer pair of hands in Goal! as someone who's made commercial Hollywood movies, including Judge Dredd and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, as well as currently serving as director, executive producer and writer of the award-winning top US TV drama CSI and spin-offs CSI: Miami and CSI: New York.

Goal! isn't the only movie going through directorial turmoil. Mission Impossible 3, due to begin filming this autumn, has been postponed until next year after director Joe Carnahan left a month before shooting. Star Tom Cruise is currently seeking a replacement. All this happened after European locations had been chosen and a cast, including Kenneth Branagh and Scarlett Johansson, assembled.

Winterbottom's career will survive. He's currently out promoting his latest movie Code 46, a futuristic thriller starring Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. At least he left Goal! before a foot of film had been exposed. Richard Stanley spent years preparing to bring his version of HG Wells' story The Island Of Dr Moreau to the big screen, only to be removed after less than a week's filming.

He had other problems, namely lead actor Val Kilmer, who's noted for, shall we say, eccentric behaviour on the set. He arrived on location in Queensland and, for reasons we can only guess at, demanded that his role be cut by 40 per cent.

Stanley had little time to ponder this dilemma as producers took one look at the first few days' rushes and relieved him of his duties. As a new director reported for duty, rumours went round that the deposed film-maker intended to sabotage the production. In the event, he retreated to the woods, allegedly stole a costume and secretly returned to the set dressed as one of mad doctor Moreau's half-man, half-beast creatures. The story goes that he appears, in disguise, as an extra in the movie.

Other directors have actually completed and edited movies before being removed. The problems that have beset Exorcist: The Beginning have done nothing to dispel the idea there's a curse on those associated with this series of devilish films. The film finally opens in US cinemas this weekend after the death of the first director, the sacking of the second but, hopefully, third time lucky for the final helmer Renny Harlin.

When original director John Frankenheimer died, the prequel about the early encounters with evil by Father Merrin passed to Paul Schrader. The backers didn't like the result, claiming it wasn't horrific enough, and hired Harlin to film additional scenes. He ended up shooting a whole new film, although with the same actor, Stellan Skarsgard, as the devil-fighting priest. The $32m spent on Schrader's version won't be wasted as there are plans to release it on a double DVD with Harlin's.

Directors at odds with studios or producers is nothing new. Back in 1942, Orson Welles was hot property after his feature debut, Citizen Kane. RKO gave him a big budget to make The Magnificent Ambersons only to face poor reaction to test screenings.

In the absence of Welles, who was out of the country shooting a propaganda film for the US government, studio executives took the scissors to the footage themselves and lopped more than 30 minutes from the original cut. The film still won four Oscar nominations but failed at the box office. Welles regarded his cut as better than Citizen Kane, but we'll never know if he was right as his version was lost.

Things did work out for Gone With The Wind, despite losing original director George Cukor three weeks into filming. He was replaced because of constant disagreements with producer David O Selznick over the script and direction, rather than suggestions that Clark Gable considered him better suited as a so-called woman's director.

Newcastle-raised director Mike Figgis still finds it impossible to watch his film Mr Jones, a Hollywood-financed drama with Richard Gere as a character suffering from manic depression. The problem was that the studio wanted this story about mental illness to have a happy ending. Figgis has told of the endless rewrites and reshoots ordered to make that happen.

After tussles with the film-maker, Mr Jones was taken away from Figgis and re-cut into what was thought would be a more commercial movie. It still flopped.

British commercials director Tony Kaye found himself at odds with both his producers and his leading man when he made American History X. A clash with the studio over changes led to an acrimonious battle of words between Kaye and executives in trade paper advertisements. Eventually, star Edward Norton was asked to deliver a cut of the film. This was released and his performance earned him a best actor Oscar nomination.

Kaye wasn't allowed to have his name taken off the film, causing him to launch a $200m lawsuit.

Even James Cameron, the man who gave cinemas Terminator and Titanic, had a brush with executives early in his career when he signed to direct B-movie sequel Piranha II: The Spawning in the early 1980s. He was sacked after a couple of weeks, sneaked in and began editing the film, only to see it recut by someone else and his name still on the credits. He labelled the result "the finest flying killer fish film ever". Two decades later he saw Titanic win 11 Oscars and become the highest-grossing film ever.

Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam was one of the few directors who managed to get his own way in a battle with the studio that wanted to release its own, shorter, version of his fantasy drama Brazil.

He retaliated by arranging screenings of his cut and putting advertisements in trade papers challenging them to release it in cinemas.

The final straw came when the LA Critics' Association awarded Brazil best picture, best director and best screenplay prizes. The studio admitted defeat and released Gilliam's version in cinemas, but it was a hollow victory as the film failed to become a box-office hit.