We don’t know what you’ve been doing with your last few Sundays, but if you have HBO and haven’t been watching “True Detective,” you’re doing it wrong. Easily a contender for the best show of 2014 (yes, we know it’s only January) unless it really screws the pooch in the second half of the season, this will go down as one of the all-time great dramas. But here’s something that has long been known but that you might have forgotten: it’s a one-shot deal. Kind of. Sorta like “American Horror Story,” if “True Detective” continues, the next season will feature a whole new cast, setting and story, but the man crucially behind it will stay the same: writer Nic Pizzolatto.
And the good news is that Deadline reports that HBO has inked a two year deal with Pizzolatto, and even better, Deadline adds that he’s already at work on a draft for season two. As for what to expect from season two? The sky is the limit. “If we got to do it again, the setting would be a major character, along with our leads,” the writer said at this month’s TCA. “I tried to make the format as broad for my tastes as possible in the sense that this is almost the ‘True Detective’ version of a buddy‑cop movie hunting for a serial killer. And there could be a season that’s much more of a widespread conspiracy thriller, a season that’s a small‑town murder mystery, a season where nobody is murdered and it’s a master criminal versus a rogue detective or something. Even the title, ‘True Detective,’ is meant to be, of course, purposefully somewhat generic – the word “true” can also mean honorable and authentic and things like that. So as long as there is some crime in there, I think the series format can approach it.”
It’s a nice way to keep the creative box open, but the question is whether or not Pizzolatto—who wrote all of “True Detective” on spec—can or will open things up to the standard writers room, given that shouldering an entire season is a lot of work. The answer is: collaboration won’t be easy. “I didn’t come to Hollywood to be subservient to anyone else’s vision,” he told the LA Times. But hell, so far, Pizzolatto’s vision is flawless, and thankfully with a new deal at HBO, we’ll be seeing more of it. And that’s not all.
Deadline also reveals Pizzolatto’s debut novel “Galveston“—which first put him on the map—is now headed to the big screen, with Matthias Schoenaerts (“Bullhead,” “Rust & Bone“) to star. Not too shabby. It’s another gritty slice of crime noir, with comparisons to Cormac McCarthy having been tossed around. Janus Metz (“Armadillo“) will direct, with the script from Pizzolatto himself. Here’s the synopsis from Amazon:
On the same day that Roy Cady is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he senses that his boss, a dangerous loan-sharking bar-owner, wants him dead. Known “without affection” to members of the boss’s crew as “Big Country” on account of his long hair, beard, and cowboy boots, Roy is alert to the possibility that a routine assignment could be a deathtrap. Which it is. Yet what the would-be killers do to Roy Cady is not the same as what he does to them, which is to say that after a smoking spasm of violence, they are mostly dead and he is mostly alive.
Before Roy makes his getaway, he realizes there are two women in the apartment, one of them still breathing, and he sees something in her frightened, defiant eyes that causes a fateful decision. He takes her with him as he goes on the run from New Orleans to Galveston, Texas—an action as ill-advised as it is inescapable. The girl’s name is Rocky, and she is too young, too tough, too sexy—and far too much trouble. Roy, Rocky, and her sister hide in the battered seascape of Galveston’s country-western bars and fleabag hotels, a world of treacherous drifters, pickup trucks, and ashed-out hopes. Any chance that they will find safety there is soon lost. Rocky is a girl with quite a story to tell, one that will pursue and damage Roy for a very long time to come.
This one is moving fast, with a spring start eyed and casting underway. And if anything, it’s a good time to be Nic Pizzolatto.