Cary Fukunaga was just coming off the stellar first season of True Detective when he was hired to write and direct a big screen adaptation of Stephen King's It and while the version we ended up getting was a critical and commercial hit, many fans of the novel are still disappointed we never got to see the filmmaker's take on the material. At the time, it was said to be down to "creative differences" but during a recent interview, Fukunaga shed some light on what actually went down at Warner Bros.
"[They] thought they couldn’t control me," he explains. "I would have been a total collaborator. That was the kind of ridiculous part. It was just more a perception. I have never seen a note and been like, f**k you guys. No way. It’s always been a conversation." He went on to explain that he compromised heavily on Beasts of No Nation, pointing out that he was always willing to reach compromises on that.
"I don’t think I’ve ever been able to make something uncompromising. Like, someone commented on Beasts, ‘Oh, how did it feel to make a movie that’s uncompromising?’ Like, uncompromising? I had to rewrite my entire third act ’cause we didn’t have the money to finish the film. We compromise all over the place." Ultimately, the studio clearly felt they couldn't count on him to make a commercial movie. In fairness, it's easy to see why, especially based on what we know about his take.
Fukunaga would have heavily deviated from the source material and included a lot of sexual undertones, something which could have resulted in a version of It which wouldn't have taken off.
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