Three strikes and you're out? Not for acclaimed filmmaker Steven Soderbergh - now on the rebound after whiffing on five poorly received films.
"They were tiny bombs, so I don't think they were held against me personally," he told The New York Times. "Nobody expected them to be blockbusters and then said, `Oh, what a disaster!"Since bursting onto the film scene at age 26 with his quirky "Sex, Lies and Videotape," the director was hailed as the next Steven Spielberg or Woody Allen.
Then came the bleak "Kafka," "King of the Hill," "Underneath," "Schizopolis," and "Gray's Anatomy" - low-grossing, almost experimental films.
"I had a bad case of my 20s, of being overly serious. And now I feel better at my job than I was," he said.
Soderbergh, 35, returns this summer with the people-pleaser "Out of Sight."