Mr. Robot’s Showrunner Wants to Pull a Cary Fukunaga

Mr. Robot’s showrunner will direct all episodes of the second season.

Sometimes it is still difficult to believe that a show as good as Mr. Robot ended up on USA. No offense to the network, but it has been known mostly for Law & Order and NCIS reruns — not its original content. By acquiring Mr. Robot from Anonymous Content, USA hopes to change all that. Considering how fantastic Mr. Robot actually is it looks like they have a good shot at it.

The first season of Mr. Robot was directed by a slew of directors which is the usual way of doing things. Sam Esmail, Mr. Robot’s creator and showrunner, wants to flip the script. According to Variety, Esmail will be directing all episodes for the second season of Mr. Robot. Esmail gave a reason for the change, citing artistic vision:

"“I am so very specific in how I want to shoot the show and the visual grammar of how I want to tell the story…It’s nothing against our directors in the first season, because they were all great to work with. For me, it feels like it would be easier to manage day to day. I’m on the set every day anyway, and I just think it would make the whole show be more efficient.”"

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That’s a fair point. It’s obvious that Esmail feels so attached to Mr. Robot that he wants to make sure that his specific vision comes to light. Part of the reason that Cary Fukunaga is currently a hot commodity is because of his work on the first season of True Detective. It looks like a single director for a series is becoming something of a trend.

Sam Esmail won’t be giving up his duties as showrunner to start directing, so hopefully Mr. Robot won’t suffer for being the Sam Esmail show. Frankly, Nic Pizzolatto taking over as director for True Detective would arguably be one of the worst things that could happen. His vision is a bit too singular.

Watch a behind the scenes interview with Sam Esmail:

Shows have successfully had multiple for directors since, well, forever. There’s no reason that there would be a sea change now, though that doesn’t mean we won’t see single directors a little more often.

Next: Vanity Fair thinks that Bosh is a better True Detective.

We wish Sam Esmail success on his endeavor, as Mr. Robot is easily one of the best shows on television.