David Cronenberg Was Almost Involved With True Detective Season Two

By Reuben Levine | Oct 1, 2015

We never knew all that much about the True Detective season two directors. When it was announced that Cary Fukunaga would not be returning we agonized over who the new directors would be. It turned out that neither HBO nor True Detective cared as much as we did, so the only announcement made was that Just Lin would be directing the first two episodes.

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It turns out, however, that other directors were approached to direct. Indie Wire is reporting that David Cronenberg was asked to direct the first episode of season two, and he was plenty blunt as to why he turned it down:

"“Last year I was approached to direct the first episode of the second season of ‘True Detective,’ I considered it but I thought that the script was bad, so I didn’t do it.”"

So there you have it. One of the masters of gross-out horror didn’t think season two of True Detective was up to snuff. This all went down at the Reykjavik International Film Festival, at which Cronenberg received the Lifetime Achievement Award. Besides trashing True Detective, Cronenberg also discussed his work and his process.

To be honest, David Cronenberg wouldn’t have actually fit True Detective all that well. His sensibilities don’t exactly jive with the directorial tone that we’ve come to expect from the series, so it’s not any great loss that he chose not to take it on. Still, his opinion generally fits in with the popular one, and at the very least he read the script before deciding.

David Cronenberg is one of the great independent film makers, so the article is worth a read to at least see what else he has to say about film and television. He’s also one of the rare celebrated filmmakers to be all for digital film.

You can read the entire piece over at Indie Wire.

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