Cary Fukunaga
Why did he leave the project? It would have been much better if he had directed it.
shareObviously it comes down to personal choice, but from what I've read about the ideas he had for the movie, I much prefer the director who actually got the final job. To quote about the ideas from TVTropes:
"After several years working on the project Fukunaga ultimately left the project in 2015, citing Executive Meddling that clashed with his artistic vision. He had planned for some pretty strange changes, re-naming many of the characters: Bill became Willy, Henry became Travis, Belch became Snatch and Patrick Hockstetter became Patrick Hockstettler. His more extreme changes from the source material — which were included in subsequent drafts — included Henry Bowers having sex with a sheep, ejaculating on a birthday cake, and gave Pennywise backstory of sorts (the 2014 version had him trigger an attack at a bar in the 1800's for his own amusement while the 2015 version had made him a Wendigo-type figure who had been living around since Colonial Times). In addition, the script wouldn't have emphasized Pennywise's shapeshifting abilities as much, which is something that Andrés Muschietti wanted to change when they revised the script."
Again, it comes down to taste, but the final movie was much closer to the book then what it sounds like Cary's vision would have been, so I'm happy with the final product.
I am just surprised that they chose a pretty unknown director who did a couple of less than satisfactory films. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I think Fukunaga is a fantastic director who would have made this a great movie. This has only gotten an 8.2 on IMDB and I have a feeling that it will settle somewhere in the 7's.
shareYou say "only gotten" an 8.2. Yes, I think when the dust has settled, this will score in-between 7.7 and 8.3, but for a horror movie, that is a really damn good rating, in regards to IMDb scores. No, it's not the 8.5 of Psycho (1960) or Alien (1979), but I'd argue it's a really good rating considering everything. Hell, even if it takes a dive and ends up at 7, that's still actually a good rating for a horror movie. Not great, but a higher than the average of the horror that generally get released.
I have no thoughts on Fukunaga as a director. I don't think I've ever watched anything he's done, and maybe he would have done a movie better than the one we have, but from my point of view, with the ideas he wanted in the movie which I quoted, I can say I wouldn't have liked the movie as much, unless he did some amazing other things with the other parts of the film.
The movie we ended up with deviated from the source material far too much for my taste. Sounds like Fukunaga's version would have been a disaster.
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