With rave reviews rolling in for Cary Fukunaga‘s "Beasts Of No Nation" (read ours), you have to wonder if Warner Bros./New Line is wincing slightly at having let the director go from their brewing adaptation of Stephen King‘s "It" over clashing visions for the movie. "…we just wanted to make different movies,” Fukunaga recently said, being diplomatic about the situation. But in a new interview with Variety, the filmmaker is a bit more pointed, saying things got "quietly acrimonious" with the studio, and he shares what his two-part horror would’ve entailed.
“I was trying to make an unconventional horror film. It didn’t fit into the algorithm of what they knew they could spend and make money back on based on not offending their standard genre audience. Our budget was perfectly fine," he said, disputing early chatter that cost was the reason he exited the picture. "It was the creative that we were really battling. It was two movies….In the first movie, what I was trying to do was an elevated horror film with actual characters. They didn’t want any characters. They wanted archetypes and scares. I wrote the script. They wanted me to make a much more inoffensive, conventional script. But I don’t think you can do proper Stephen King and make it inoffensive."
READ MORE: Tribeca: Cary Fukunaga Talks ‘True Detective,’ and ‘Beasts Of No Nation’
“The main difference was making Pennywise more than just the clown," he continued. "After 30 years of villains that could read the emotional minds of characters and scare them, trying to find really sadistic and intelligent ways he scares children, and also the children had real lives prior to being scared. And all that character work takes time. It’s a slow build, but it’s worth it, especially by the second film. But definitely even in the first film, it pays off."
Fukunaga goes on to say that "millions" were spent on pre-production, but he was being "micro-managed" every step of the way. That said, he does concede: "I’m not sure if the fans would have liked what I would had done. I was honoring King’s spirit of it, but I needed to update it. King saw an earlier draft and liked it.”
So we’ll have to see what direction the project goes in now, but expect something a little more ordinary. Bummer.
@LA2000 — amazing idea!
If Warner\’s was smart, they\’d publish the Fukunaga script with a forward by Stephen King and concept art for $50 in hardback for the holidays. It will get leaked eventually, and at that point Warners makes nothing. Might as well put it out there so its not a holy grail distraction when the next iteration finally goes forward.