Cary Fukunaga has opened up about why he didn't return to HBO's True Detective for its second season. An acclaimed director, Fukunaga has dabbled in just about everything. After bursting onto the scene with his indie film Sin Nombre, Fukunaga spread his wings across film and television, directing projects as varied as a new interpretation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre to his newest film, the long-delayed 25th Bond film No Time to Die, which hits theaters on October 8.
One of Fukunaga's most noteworthy television projects is the first season of HBO's True Detective, which premiered in 2014. The season, which stars Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as detectives who must reopen the case of a murdered prostitute from 1995 in the light of new unsolved crimes, quickly became a critical and audience favorite. Despite this, Fukunaga left the project, and True Detective season 2, which told a new anthology story with Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, and Rachel McAdams, was widely maligned.
While speaking with THR about No Time to Die, Fukunaga revealed the reason he didn't continue with True Detective after season 1. His friction with writer Nic Pizzolatto during production on that series has been well documented, but he went into detail on his frustration, considering that he was promised the series would be like "an independent film made into television." He was frustrated with the amount of power the writer was attempting to wield over him rather than being a collaborator, reinforced by the brass at HBO. His decisions about how to edit down the writing weren't being supported, so he left after production on season 1 wrapped. Read the full quote here:
The show was presented to me in the way we pitched it around town — as an independent film made into television. The writer and director are a team. Over the course of the project, Nic [Pizzolatto] kept positioning himself as if he was my boss and I was like, “But you’re not my boss. We’re partners. We collaborate.” By the time they got to postproduction, people like [programming president] Michael Lombardo were giving Nic more power.
It was disheartening because it didn’t feel like the partnership was fair. Nic is a really good writer, but I do think he needs to be edited down. It becomes too much about the writing and not enough about the momentum of the story. My struggle with him was to take some of these long dialogue scenes and put some air into them. We differed on tone and taste.
This isn't the first project Fukunaga has left because of creative differences. Fukunaga was originally slated to direct It before the project moved to New Line and he stepped down, with Andy Muschietti eventually taking the director's seat. Indeed he has made a bit of a habit of project hopping, having left Netflix's Maniac after the first season as well, even though there was a high chance that they would be developing another season. That time, he left in search of a new creative thrill.
The lesson that can be learned from this True Detective admission is that Fukunaga has a finely honed sense of exactly what he wants to be doing as a director. This would explain why so many of his projects have such a strong fan base. Hopefully he continues his hot streak because his next project is an adaptation of the cyberpunk comic Tokyo Ghoul, which will certainly bring its fair share of fan expectations.
Source: THR