Filmmaker Tim Burton says his days directing movies for Hollywood studio Disney are over.

The 64-year-old director, who started his career with the Mouse House as an animator straight out of college, recalled his experience of directing Disney’s 2019 movie Dumbo.

The film, which was a reimagining of Walt Disney’s 1941 animated feature, was a “horrible big circus”, Burton told entertainment news website Deadline.

“My history is that I started out there. I was hired and fired several times throughout my career there,” said the filmmaker, known for Disney blockbusters like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass.

“The thing about Dumbo is that's why I think my days with Disney are done: I realised that I was Dumbo, that I was working in this horrible big circus, and I needed to escape. That movie is quite autobiographical at a certain level,” he explained.

Featuring a star-studded cast of Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Eva Green and Alan Arkin, Dumbo performed poorly at the box office and was panned by the critics.

Burton also criticised how Disney had shifted away from smaller projects in favour of focusing on its more established Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars franchises.

“It's gotten to be very homogenised, very consolidated. There's less room for different types of things,” he said.