Cary Fukunaga is a filmmaker with a style that is hard to describe. Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright, David Fincher, and many other famous directors have an indelible touch they bring to each project that ends up making their respective films unmistakable at a glance. The same can’t be said about Fukunaga. And according to a new interview with IndieWire, that’s completely by design.
The director admits, “So, from the very beginning, it was intentional to keep people guessing what kind of films I would be doing and why.”
READ MORE: Cary Fukunaga Says He Left “IT” Because The Studio Was Scared They Couldn’t “Control” Him
That guessing is especially relevant considering the news he’ll be taking on the world of superspy 007, aka James Bond. The recent news that Fukunaga was going to tackle the high-anticipated ‘Bond 25’ seemed to take the film world by surprise. There were plenty of names floating around, from the conventional to the more unusual, such as the aforementioned Edgar Wright. But before last week, if you asked someone to write down a list of likely ‘Bond’ directors, Fukunaga wouldn’t be in the top 100, probably.
However, if you listen to the director talk, tackling this type of big-budget spy franchise has been all part of his master plan. He’s just had some detours, like the ultra-trippy “Maniac,” along the way. “No, I’ve wanted to do one of these [‘Bond’ films] for a long time, so that’s not new. So right now, it’s just kind of dealing with the shock that it’s real,” said Fukunaga.
Speaking of “Maniac,” the director talked about how working on such a tonally-diverse series, that changes tones as quickly as it does settings, made for an interesting challenge of figuring out what’s going to be too much or what might be not enough.
He explained, while drawing an analogy to the classic comedy “Tropic Thunder:”
“It was my job to sometimes pull back, sometimes push for more and then have the options once we started editing what was too much, what would really feel like a break. ‘Let’s do a take with a little bit less of the emotional fireworks’ — I always reference that scene in ‘Tropic Thunder,’ which Justin [Theroux] was a writer on, when Ben Stiller’s character is over-crying with Robert Downey Jr [saying], ‘I can’t act with you crying so much.’ That movie is so intelligent in terms of its observations about how cinema works and is created. [It’s] pretty spot-on.”
So yeah, we know that Fukunaga is heading to the world of superspies and pretty ladies for his next film, in ‘Bond 25,” but what does the future hold for the filmmaker? He’s gone from a period piece (“Jane Eyre”) to serial killers (“True Detective”) to a war-torn Africa (“Beasts of No Nation”) before settling in the Sci-fi/Fantasy/Comedy/Whatever genre that “Maniac” sits in. Now, he’s adding spy-thriller to the list. Well, if you listen to Fukunaga, his future is in…sitcoms?
“I’m kind of hungry now for situational comedies again, where you don’t have to watch things in chronological order,” said Fukunaga. “In some of my work with Paramount in terms of development, I’ve been trying to conceive of those kind of shows.”
Look, he hasn’t really steered audiences wrong yet, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens with Fukunaga as his career continues to skyrocket.
And just for fun, take a look at the clip that precedes the moment that Fukunaga loves so much in “Tropic Thunder,” featuring the awesome Stiller and RDJ: