Cary Fukunaga Talks About The Alienist in New Interview

By Reuben Levine | Sep 16, 2015

Since departing True Detective after directing the entire first season, Cary Fukunaga has kept himself very busy. With Beasts of no Nation getting early Oscar buzz and recently receiving an award, Fukunaga is certainly a rising star. Not that there haven’t been bumps in the road; he left his new adaptation of Stephen King’s IT after too much studio meddling. Can’t win em’ all.

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Fortunately for fans of Cary Fukunaga’s distinct sense of style, he’ll be returning to television with an adaptation of The Alienist on TNT. In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Fukunaga talks about the hurdles of directing a mini-series event like The Alienist:

"“When you prep a feature film, you usually take seven to 10 weeks if you’re lucky. The longer the better, and that’s only for 100 or 110 pages of material…Once you start getting into hundreds of pages, you need a separate pre-production within the production, which makes things really…If I were to direct the whole thing, I would probably break it up into two or three parts, almost as if it was two or three movies, and then prep them in that way.”"

It’s not difficult to see something of True Detective in that statement. The stress of working in that fashion may have been what led to Fukunaga and Nic Pizzolatto agreeing that he would only do a single season. Unlike Pizzolatto, however, Cary Fukunaga is open to co-director to help him get through it all this time around:

"“At least we could hop-scotch and help each other out and really approach it in the same spirit of a film, which is collaboration,…They’re equal with you in terms of executing it.”"

Collaboration is an important tool, and it’s refreshing to know that it’s something that Fukunaga is looking into. As Entertainment Weekly points out, though, it all hangs on what the script is like, which is not yet finished. Still, we’re excited for Fukunaga’s eventual return to television. It almost takes the sting out of losing IT.

Next: Watch the best True Detective fan made trailer out there.

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