Peter Hyams did an excellent job on 2010.
Kubrick gets a lot of attention, but he's actually very overrated. People always say "Kubrick's 2001" or "Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket" or "Kubrick's The Shining", but in fact they were all taken from books by other people (Arthur C Clarke, Gustav Hasford, and Stephen King). King was angry at the changes Kubrick made to his story. Hasford received little money from the lucrative movie, and died in poverty a few years later.
Spartacus was from a book written by Howard Fast, and the screenplay was by Dalton Trumbo. Edward Lewis and Kirk Douglas decided on everything in the movie. It was to be directed by someone else, Anthony Mann, but Douglas fired Mann at the end of the first week of shooting, in which the opening sequence in the quarry had been filmed, then Kubrick was brought in. Douglas and Lewis found Kubrick's eagerness to take credit for Trumbo's work revolting.
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