Filmmaker Peter Medak dies in Los Angeles aged 88

Oh, it was probably the biggest nightmare of my life, director Peter Medak once said of his tumultuous 1970s feature, a sentiment that captured an uncompromising six-decade career across British cinema and Hollywood.

Peter Medak, the Hungarian-born filmmaker whose diverse credits spanned the supernatural horror The Changeling, the British gangster drama The Krays, and episodes of television dramas like Breaking Bad and The Wire, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 88.

From Budapest to British Cinema

Medak was born in Budapest in 1937. He spent part of the Second World War in hiding with his family before his father was imprisoned under Hungary’s Communist government, a period that barred the young Medak from finishing school. He fled the country during the 1956 uprising against Communist rule and arrived in England, where he entered the film industry as a trainee. He worked his way through production roles, serving as a clapper boy and assistant director before breaking into feature filmmaking.

His 1968 feature directorial debut, Negatives, starred Glenda Jackson in a psychosexual drama about a couple acting out fantasies as Jack the Ripper and a vampire. That early work established a restless visual curiosity. He followed it with the 1972 satire The Ruling Class, led by Peter O’Toole, which competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes and earned O’Toole an Oscar nomination.

Medak Developed Projects with Dory Previn During His First Hollywood Phase

During a short-lived first Hollywood phase following the release of The Ruling Class and A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Medak developed several projects with singer-songwriter Dory Previn. Previn’s semi-autobiographical screenplay, The Third Girl from the Left, became Medak’s first US feature as a 1973 television movie. Though that initial Hollywood push failed to ignite a permanent move at the time, Medak maintained a lifelong fondness for Previn, contributing half a century later to the 2024 documentary Dory Previn: On My Way to Where.

Medak achieved acclaim with the 1980 supernatural thriller The Changeling, starring George C. Scott. The haunted house film won eight Genie Awards, including best motion picture, and earned praise for its patient, atmospheric tension. The film stands alongside The Haunting and The Innocents as proof that a ghost story built on patience outlasts one built on effects, trusting a rubber ball bouncing down a staircase over shock cuts.

His feature output also included Let Him Have It, the Gary Oldman-starrer Romeo Is Bleeding, and 1990’s The Krays, which earned him the Evening Standard Award for best director.

Medak Directed American Television Series and Later Documentaries

Medak transitioned fluidly into American television, directing episodes of The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, Homicide: Life on the Street, House, Hannibal, and Masters of Horror, alongside the 1998 creature sequel Species II. For HBO’s The Wire, he directed the third-season episode “Back Burners,” which aired in 2004. For AMC’s Breaking Bad, he directed the season two episode “Peekaboo,” which originally aired in 2009 and followed Jesse Pinkman confronting a couple who had stolen from a drug dealer.

In 2018, Medak turned the camera on his own turbulent past with the documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers, revisiting the troubled production of his 1970s comedy Ghost in the Noonday Sun, a project he described to the Directors Guild of America in 2007 as the biggest nightmare of his life. Medak is survived by his four children—Christopher, Joshua, Karen, and Cornela—and five grandchildren, named Sacha, Marlowe, Ryden, Oliver, and Anders.