Skip to main content

Studio meddling pushed him out of Stephen King’s IT, says True Detective’s Cary Fukunaga

stephen king it movie photo pennywise
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Back in May, True Detective director Cary Fukunaga made a sudden and unexpected exit from New Line Studios’ big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, reportedly due to creative differences over the film’s budget. In a recent interview, however, the Emmy-winning director indicated that budget had nothing to do with his departure.

According to Fukunaga, his decision to leave IT was based on differences with the studio over the content and direction of the film.

“I was trying to make an unconventional horror film,” Fukunaga told Variety. “It didn’t fit into the algorithm of what they knew they could spend and make money back on, based on not offending their standard genre audience. Our budget was perfectly fine. We were always hovering at the $32 million mark, which was their budget. It was the creative that we were really battling.”

Fukunaga went on to suggest that the two-part structure he was envisioning for the story didn’t go over well with the studio, which wanted something a little more traditional for its big-screen version of Stephen King’s terrifying 1986 novel.

“It was two movies. [New Line] didn’t care about that,” he continued. “In the first movie, what I was trying to do was an elevated horror film with actual characters. They didn’t want any characters. They wanted archetypes and scares. I wrote the script. They wanted me to make a much more inoffensive, conventional script. But I don’t think you can do proper Stephen King and make it inoffensive.”

Fukunaga went on to describe his plans for Pennywise the Clown, the nightmare-inducing personification of the evil entity at the heart of King’s story. Memorably played by Tim Curry in the 1990 television miniseries Stephen King’s IT, Pennywise was to be played by talented young actor Will Poulter (The Maze Runner) in the new film — an unconventional casting choice that generated quite a bit of buzz when it was announced.

That wasn’t the only new direction Fukunaga planned to take the character of Pennywise, either.

“The main difference was making Pennywise more than just the clown,” he said of the iconic character. “After 30 years of villains that could read the emotional minds of characters and scare them, trying to find really sadistic and intelligent ways he scares children, and also the children had real lives prior to being scared. And all that character work takes time. It’s a slow build, but it’s worth it, especially by the second film. But definitely even in the first film, it pays off.”

“It was being rejected,” Fukunaga went on in his detailed explanation of the breakdown of his relationship with the studio. “Every little thing was being rejected and asked for changes. Our conversations weren’t dramatic. It was just quietly acrimonious. We didn’t want to make the same movie. We’d already spent millions on pre-production. I certainly did not want to make a movie where I was being micro-managed all the way through production, so I couldn’t be free to actually make something good for them. I never desire to screw something up. I desire to make something as good as possible.”

With Mama director Andy Muschietti now rumored to be the front-runner to replace Fukunaga on the film, the studio is also expected to do a rewrite of the script penned by Fukunaga, David Kajganich, and Chase Palmer. According to Fukunaga, this comes as welcome news.

“We invested years and so much anecdotal storytelling in it,” he explained. “Chase and I both put our childhood in that story. So our biggest fear was they were going to take our script and bastardize it. So I’m actually thankful that they are going to rewrite the script. I wouldn’t want them stealing our childhood memories and using that. I mean, I’m not sure if the fans would have liked what I would had done. I was honoring King’s spirit of it, but I needed to update it. King saw an earlier draft and liked it.”

There’s currently no timetable for New Line’s adaptation of IT to begin production.

Rick Marshall
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
John Lee Hancock on directing Mr. Harrigan’s Phone and the enduring appeal of Stephen King
John Lee Hancock directs two actors in Mr. Harrigan's Phone.

There's a good chance you've seen a film by John Lee Hancock. The veteran writer/director has been behind some of the most critically acclaimed studio movies of the last three decades. He wrote the Clint Eastwood movies A Perfect World in 1993 and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in 1997. Later, he directed the baseball movie The Rookie in 2002, the 2004 western The Alamo, the Oscar-nominated 2009 drama The Blind Side, and, most recently, the 2021 thriller The Little Things with Denzel Washington and Jared Leto.

With Mr. Harrigan's Phone on Netflix, Hancock finally gets to direct a proper horror film. In a conversation with Digital Trends, the director talks about his interest in adapting Stephen King, working with lead star Jaeden Martell, and how the film prioritizes the central relationship between Mr. Harrigan and Craig over cheap thrills.

Read more
Jaeden Martell on Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, Stephen King, and the horrors of technology
mr harrigans phone jaeden martell interview 2

Jaeden Martell is no stranger to the world of Stephen King. As young Bill Denbrough in 2017's It and 2019's It: Chapter Two, Martell, along with a cast of talented young actors such as Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard and Jack Dylan Grazer of Shazam!, battled the horrors of suburbia, puberty, and Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

Martell is back in King's haunted Maine stomping grounds with Mr. Harrigan's Phone on Netflix. Co-starring Donald Sutherland, the film focuses on the relationship between Sutherland's reclusive Mr. Harrigan and Martell's shy, mournful teenager, Craig, and what happens when Mr. Harrington keeps calling his young friend even after he dies. In a conversation with Digital Trends, Martell discusses the film's many themes, how it's not just a horror film, and what other Stephen King film adaptation he would like to star in.

Read more
5 underrated Stephen King movies you need to watch
Carla Gugino glances to the side in Gerald's Game.

It’s officially October, which means that spooky movie season is finally upon us. No October would be complete, either, without the release of a new Stephen King adaptation. Fortunately, Netflix's adaptation of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, which is based on King’s novella of the same name, is set to fill that annual spot this year.

As all horror fans will know, almost no author’s work has been adapted into as many films and TV shows over the years as Stephen King’s. However, while a great number of the King adaptations that Hollywood has released have received acclaim and widespread attention, many of them have also been forgotten or lost to time.

Read more