Cary Fukunaga was set to direct New Line's adaptation of It but left the project back in May, and now he's opening up about what he wanted to do with the film.
In a conversation with Variety, Fukunaga said his take on It would have been unconventional, and that isn't what the studio wanted from him.
"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," he said. "...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 say he put a lot of work into developing the characters, describing his movie as a slow build but adding that "all character work takes time." However, the studio apparently wasn't happy with that, wanting a more traditional horror film with a certain amount of scares per minute.
The studio was rejecting nearly everything Fukunaga had in mind, and he quickly realized they didn't want to make the same movie. "I certainly did not want to make a movie where I was being micro-managed all the way through production," he explained.
Initially it was reported that the director left due to budgetary concerns, but he explained that this wasn't the case, noting that the budget was always going to be around $32 million.
Despite Fukunaga's exit, New Line's It is still happening, although the studio is currently in search of a new director. They also plan to start over with a new script rather than modifying Fukunaga's version.
Image courtesy of INFevents.com