Slideshow: Other Reasons Famous Directors Passed on ‘True Detective Season 2’

Joss Whedon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Dollhouse")
"Not really a fan of anything too Flat Circle-y."
David Lynch ("Twin Peaks")
"Derivative and nonsensical."
Neil LaBute ("Billy & Billie")
"Not enough strong female characters."
Ryan Murphy ("American Horror Story," "Scream Queens")
"Too busy."
Advertisement
James Franco ("Francophrenia," "Masculinity & Me")
"Dropped out when Pizzolatto gave role of Paul Woodrugh to cis-gendered Taylor Kitsch over my first pick for role: myself."
David Fincher ("House of Cards," "Se7en")
"Script showed total lack of comprehension when it came to capturing the 'noir' genre."
Jill Soloway ("Transparent")
"Script showed total lack of comprehension when it came to capturing what it's like to roll on Ecstasy."
Advertisement
McG ("Terminator: Salvation," "The Mysteries of Laura")
"Too subtle."
M. Night Shyamalan ("Wayward Pines," "Lady in the Lake")
"No payoff. Like what's even the point of putting a cult in there if it doesn't turn out that they are secretly in touch with aliens who are allergic to water and also SURPRISE: the whole story actually takes place in the future?"
Nic Pizzolatto ("True Detective")
"Script was too brilliant to adapt for monkey fuck of small screen. HBO also refused to finance actual robot penis prop owned by Antigone 'Ani' Bezzerides."

(Photos via Getty Images)

Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter

By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

See all of our newsletters

Last week Vulture posted the most amazing #DirectorBurn of all time from the Reykjavik International Film Festival, where David Cronenberg opened up about passing on the opportunity to direct the second season premiere of True Detective.

“The heat is in TV. 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. In TV, the director is just a traffic cop, but on the other hand, it is work, and there’s a lot of it.”

Along the first season’s iconoclastic director/bane of Nic Pizzolatto’s existence, Cary Fukunaga, saying that he hadn’t even watched the second series of the anthology show on HBO, it seems like directors are coming out of the woodwork to deliver their most scathing critiques on the under-appreciated season. So for fun, we tried to imagine what other visionary directors passed on Pizzolatto’s bloated script, and what their excuse would have been.

We noticed you're using an ad blocker.

We get it: you like to have control of your own internet experience.
But advertising revenue helps support our journalism.

To read our full stories, please turn off your ad blocker.
We'd really appreciate it.

How Do I Whitelist Observer?

How Do I Whitelist Observer?

Below are steps you can take in order to whitelist Observer.com on your browser:

For Adblock:

Click the AdBlock button on your browser and select Don't run on pages on this domain.

For Adblock Plus on Google Chrome:

Click the AdBlock Plus button on your browser and select Enabled on this site.

For Adblock Plus on Firefox:

Click the AdBlock Plus button on your browser and select Disable on Observer.com.

Then Reload the Page
OSZAR »