![\"Spike](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Spike-Lee-Director-2026-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Spike Lee<\/p>\n
October 21st, 2026 \u00b7 12:15am BST <\/p>\n
Hollywood has long operated on the promise that if a director delivers a commercial hit, they\u2019ll earn the freedom to pursue something more personal. It\u2019s the familiar \u2018one for them, one for me\u2019 philosophy, a supposed compromise between artistic ambition and box-office success. <\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the reality is rarely so straightforward. Just ask Spike Lee<\/a>, who discovered that playing by Hollywood\u2019s rules doesn\u2019t necessarily mean getting what you want in return.<\/p>\n Some directors have successfully finessed long-term passion projects out of previous commercial successes. Martin Scorsese\u2019s long-gestating religious epics<\/a> \u2013 The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun and Silence \u2013 each only got funding after a box office hit. Considering Scorsese has long been a friend and mentor to Lee, it makes sense that Lee thought he could do the same.<\/p>\n Inside Man was a smash hit in 2006 and is still Lee\u2019s highest-grossing film with a box office of $184.4million. A fresh take on the heist movie starring Denzel Washington at the peak of his powers<\/a>, it proved that an iconoclast like Lee could make a big studio popcorn flick with mass appeal. Lee saw its success as his ticket to making one of his two dream projects: a biopic of \u2018Godfather of Soul\u2019 James Brown, or a drama about the 1992 LA riots.<\/p>\n Despite Inside Man\u2019s success, neither project got off the ground. No studio was willing to put up the budget necessary to do either justice. \u201cI got an offer, but it was not enough,\u201d Lee told The Guardian<\/a>. \u201cI was very frustrated with Hollywood, so I said, \u2018fuck it\u2019, and went to Italy.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, Lee turned to adapting James McBride\u2019s novel Miracle at St Anna, about four American soldiers from the all-Black 92nd Infantry Division who get trapped behind enemy lines during World War II. Set primarily in a small village in Tuscany, the fictionalised story spotlights the contributions of Black soldiers during the war and recreates true historical events such as the 1944 Sant\u2019Anna di Stazzema massacre.<\/p>\n Lee approached Roberto Cicutto and Luigi Musini, two Italian producers who had handled the Italian distribution of his previous films. It was July 2007, and he told Cicutto and Musini he wanted to start shooting in October. They had three months to raise $25m, and the final budget ballooned to $45m<\/a>.<\/p>\n Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/p>\n \u201cThey said, \u2018Spike, you\u2019re crazy\u2019, but I said, \u2018If we don\u2019t do this film now, it\u2019s never getting done,\u2019\u201d Lee recalled. \u201cWe willed this film into being.\u201d<\/p>\n Miracle at St Anna was a box office bomb, grossing just over $9m \u2013 about $175m less than Inside Man. Critics found it clunky and overlong. If Lee had ever had a chance to use the \u2018one for them, one for me\u2019 system to make his James Brown biopic, it was gone.<\/p>\n The James Brown biopic did eventually get made, just not by Lee. In 2014, Tate Taylor directed Get On Up<\/a>, with Chadwick Boseman as the \u2018Godfather of Soul\u2019. For Lee, it must have been a bitter sight: the film he had fought for, made by someone else. But a year later, BlacKkKlansman won him his first competitive Oscar. \u2018One for them, one for me\u2019 may never have worked for Lee, but he found his own way of getting the ones that mattered made.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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