Earlier this week, as the non-controversy over Suicide Squad’s scathing reviews reached its vesuvian apex, studio Warner Bros quietly announced the news that it has picked safe pair of directorial hands David Yates to direct the follow-up to forthcoming Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Potter author JK Rowling will also return to write her second screenplay.

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The news may not have made much of an impact because Yates is, on the face of it, not the most exciting of film-makers. In fact, he is not even the most exciting Harry Potter film-maker: Alfonso Cuarón turned in perhaps the only near-classic Potter movie to date, 2004’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Yet Yates has now been in charge for the past four movies in the second-highest grossing film series of all time, and will now direct the first two episodes in its much-hyped successor series. In Hollywood terms, the former TV director is a very big deal indeed.

To see why, we only have to look at what happens when studios trust their mega-budget productions to greener talent than Yates. Josh Trank was one of Hollywood’s most-buzzed-about young film-makers, on the back of found footage superhero tale Chronicle, before taking on last year’s Fantastic Four for 20th Century Fox, while David Ayer was widely expected to make a triumphant debut in the comic book arena with Warner/DC’s current Suicide Squad. Neither movie has quite worked out the way its key architects might have hoped. And the Hollywood trades have been full of reports about the struggles Gareth Edwards is facing on the upcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which (like both Trank and Ayer’s films) has faced extensive reshoots and editing issues.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bad reviews … Fantastic Four. Photograph: Moviestore/REX Shutterstock

The latest report suggests that the Michael Clayton director and regular Bourne series screenwriter Tony Gilroy has been called in by Disney to oversee Rogue One’s edit, though Edwards is said to still be involved. We’re told the two also partnered up on Warner Bros’s Godzilla when the Englishman’s previous big-budget blockbuster ran into trouble.

This follows Tuesday’s report that Suicide Squad’s problems may have stemmed from a rushed production schedule, as Warner Bros battles to bring its DC extended universe up to speed with the hugely successful rival Marvel films. The article suggests Ayer had just six weeks to write his screenplay for the antihero epic, and that executives (terrified of a repeat of the bad reception that greeted previous DCEU instalment Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) repeatedly intervened during the editing process. The most horrifying rumour is that Warner Bros cut its own version of the film with the help of the company that made the popular, punky and fast-cutting trailers that brought Suicide Squad all its buzz in the first place.

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Studios have been cutting their noses off to spite their faces since the dawn of the blockbuster era. Richard Donner’s visionary, Hesiodic vision of Superman as a god living among men was eventually destroyed by interventions from producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind, who wanted the saga to take a more comedic turn. They kicked Donner off Superman II in favour of the Three Musketeers director Richard Lester. David Fincher’s Alien 3 was famously ruined by 20th Century Fox’s incessant meddling, almost derailing the nascent career of a promising young film-maker.

And yet it seems the march towards endless big budget fantasy fare is increasing the chances of cinemagoers paying to see a dud. A paragraph in the Hollywood Reporter’s piece on Suicide Squad hints at a reason:

If the villain team-up ultimately works – and it has drawn some harsh early reviews – it will be in spite of the kind of behind-the-scenes drama that is becoming typical for giant franchise movies that now are the main focus of the studio business: a production schedule engineered to meet an ambitious release date; a director, David Ayer (Fury), untested in making tentpole movies; and studio executives, brimming with anxiety, who are ready to intercede forcefully as they attempt to protect a branded asset. Often, efforts to fix perceived problems ratchet up costs, which drive anxiety ever higher. In extreme cases, such as Fox’s troubled Fantastic Four, the intervention is so aggressive that it becomes unclear what it means to be the director. (In each such case, studios are careful to stress that the credited director is on-scene and in charge, which is essential to avoid DGA issues. And the wise director plays along.

Is this where fans’ ravenous desire for new big-screen material featuring their favourite fantasy icons, and Hollywood’s willingness to sate it for money, has ultimately brought us? Not so long ago, it looked like studios were getting better at making blockbusters: 2015 saw few large-scale duds, and big winners such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jurassic World took box offices by storm. Now, all of a sudden, DC’s malaise looks like it might be feeding into a larger crisis. The Hollywood machine has been infested by gremlins.

Looking back at 2015’s big beasts, a pattern emerges. Neither The Force Awakens nor Jurassic World made any real attempt to push the envelope with bold, visionary twists into radical new territory for their respective franchises. In fact, just the opposite.

JJ Abrams ripped up Michael Arndt’s original script for the Star Wars sequel and borrowed elements from the original 1977 movie that introduced us all to Luke Skywalker, lightsabers and the Force. Likewise, Jurassic World’s director Colin Trevorrow played heavily on nostalgia for the Steven Spielberg original, even wheeling out everyone’s favourite dino, the T-Rex, to take down his hideous genetically modified successor in the movie’s denouement. He was promptly rewarded with a Star Wars film.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Recycled … Star Wars: The Force Awakens reused elements of the original films. Photograph: Allstar/Disney/Lucasfilm

Marvel is the model for delivering regular, strong content. Since the release of 2008’s Iron Man, the Disney-owned studio has pumped out roughly two new movies each year, with only the odd semi-dud (such as last year’s Ant Man or 2013’s Thor: The Dark World) to slightly tarnish an overall excellent back catalogue. But is it any coincidence that Marvel president Kevin Feige has increasingly turned away from maverick film-makers (such as Edgar Wright, unceremoniously dumped from Ant-Man in favour of Yes Man’s unheralded Peyton Reed) and towards directors used to turning round movies to quick deadlines? Directors, who quite often, in fact, have their roots in the faster-moving, more collaborative territory of TV.

It doesn’t always work. The Dark World was a mess despite being overseen by Game of Thrones regular Alan Taylor, but Marvel hasn’t yet allowed a real critical or box office turkey – a movie as disastrous as Batman v Superman, Fantastic Four or Suicide Squad – to find its way into cinemas. And most of its films have been popular with both reviewers and fans, so clearly something is working.

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Sticking with the Disney-owned studio, and Joss Whedon’s travails on Avengers: Age of Ultron are well-documented. Yet the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly had the TV industry nous and film industry standing (after delivering the $1.5bn Avengers) to pull through when a lesser-known director might have buckled. Ultron is not perfect, but it was well-received and didn’t fall far short of its predecessor at the box office.

And yet it looks increasingly likely that visionary film-makers such as Whedon may slowly be shifted off these movies. Marvel’s new heroes are Captain America: Civil War directors the Russo brothers, who appear able to work within the confines of the cinematic universe – with its constantly-evolving demands to cater for new superheroes and meet tight deadlines – yet are still capable of delivering the Whedonesque brio and inter-superhero badinage that made the first Avengers film such a high-octane treat.

Once again, the Russos’ background is in TV, often seen as the movies’ poor relation. Yet this is now a golden age for the small screen, so why shouldn’t modern Hollywood learn from the only model that turns round new content at the speed it now requires – for Star Wars to deliver a movie a year and for the DC universe to stop throttling itself to death with every new desperate, rushed instalment?

In a new era for blockbuster film-making, we may need a new kind of film-maker to stop the disastrous turkeys continuing their relentless march into multiplexes. A little less visionary, a little less maverick, but capable of keeping the good stuff coming with the help of strong screenwriting. Someone with an understanding of how to work within an abiding macro-vision of a multiple-film story arc. A director, in fact, who probably works a lot like David Yates.

