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Birdman Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Turned Down True Detective

By Reuben Levine

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When going over the best television and film of 2014, there are at least two titles that keep appearing: True Detective and Birdman. Now it seems that the two share an even deeper connection than multiple year-end lists and Golden Globe nominations. 

An an interview with Indie Wire, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, director of Birdman, goes into a little more detail about how he was originally picked to be True Detective’s director. When prompted by Indie Wire, Inarritu shed some light on the decision to turn it down:

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"” I had a meeting with the writer, he gave me the second script and I knew that it would be great. There was a part of me that wanted to do it, but another part of me wanted to develop my own thing.”"

Inarritu and Cary Fukunaga — who would later become True Detective’s first season director — have similarities in their style. Both directors are deeply visual and existential at heart. Their styles are so distinct that it becomes easy to identify which films they’ve had their respective hands in.

It’s interesting to wonder what an Inarritu take of True Detective would look like, and also how close we were to getting that particular version. Both Fukunaga and Inarritu are great directors, so at least we would have been left with something special either way from a directing point of view.

We might not have to wait to long to see what Inarritu could have done with televisions, since the director also revealed that he’s prepping his own series:

"“I am glad, because I wrote a pilot this year [for a] series that is called “1%.” I’m going to do my own type of thing that I can get really invested in.”"

Look like we have a win-win situation on our hands.

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