Cary Fukunaga is gearing up for a busy few months ahead as he gets onto the awards circuit to promote Netflix‘s "Beasts Of No Nation," but the rising filmmaker does have a couple of projects that he’ll be asked about: "True Detective" and the adaptation of Stephen King‘s "It." And in recent weeks he’s addressed both of those subjects.
When it comes to HBO‘s hit show, Fukunaga says it was always his intention to get in and get out with the first season. “The whole pitch was that in a true anthology, we want to sit it on a shelf, and every season we have a new feature director and make this wonderful miniseries,” he told Variety about how the series was presented to networks. “I was going to be the first one. And I’d be there to shepherd as much as I could the following seasons. My departure was always planned.”
And while Fukunaga does retain an executive producer credit for season two, it appears it was mostly in name only. “I really wasn’t involved,” the director said. “My involvement in the second season was as much or as little as they needed me. It turns out they didn’t need me.”
Following ‘Beasts,’ Fukunaga has a few options on his table for what to do next, but one promising endeavor that fell off was his planned, two-part adaptation of Stephen King’s "It" for Warner Bros. The filmmaker spent three years working on the movie but walked away this summer reportedly over budget cuts. “Ultimately, we and New Line have to agree on the kind of movie we want to make, and we just wanted to make different movies,” Fukunaga told EW. “It’s like a relationship: you can try to make the other person who you want them to be, but it’s impossible really to change. You just have to work.” Fair enough.
"Beasts Of No Nation" hits Netflix on October 16th.