Robert Zemeckis has perhaps the most unusual career arc of any filmmaker on this list in that he ceased working in live-action for a decade to focus entirely on making multiple movies with motion capture animation. Zemeckis already had a long career of pushing new ground in special effects in films like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Forrest Gump." "Roger Rabbit" successfully combined animated and live-action characters, so it makes sense why he'd be drawn to a technique combining animated characters with a live actor's performance.
Whether this change in artistic direction was successful is another story. His first mo-cap film, 2004's "The Polar Express," was the most successful at the box office of the three, particularly given its multiple Christmastime re-releases, but its not-quite-cartoony yet not-quite-realistic dead-eyed characters instantly came to define the "uncanny valley." "Beowulf" in 2007 and 2009's "A Christmas Carol" offered some improvements to the technology, but were very expensive to produce and failed to recoup their huge budgets.
Zemeckis also produced two additional mo-cap movies via his ImageMovers Digital studio: 2006's "Monster House," directed by Gil Kenan, and 2011's "Mars Needs Moms," directed by Simon Wells. The latter was ImageMovers' final film and the biggest box office bomb of its year. A mo-cap remake of "The Yellow Submarine" never surfaced, and Zemeckis would return to live-action, though he would still use extensive animation in films like "Welcome to Marwen" and his Disney+ "Pinocchio" remake.
