Cary Fukunaga has racked up quite the resume in Hollywood, with projects like True Detective, Jane Eyre, and Beasts of No Nation just to name a few. He's received accolades from the Television Academy and the Sundance Film Festival, and has worked as a producer on a number of projects. But there’s one that fans recognize that hangs over his head, despite the fact that he never saw the project to completion: 2017’s IT. Fukunaga had been hired to write and direct the adaptation of Stephen King’s classic horror novel before it went into production, even going so far as to write a complete script for the project before backing out — but why?

Ahead of the premiere of No Time to Die, the film that would make Fukunaga the first American to direct a James Bond film, the director spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about his directing career and how he landed a Bond film. Fukunaga addressed the rumors circling around his departure from the production, assuring readers that there was really no bad blood between himself and the production crew — he insists that is the truth — but rather just creative differences, for as often as that term gets thrown around Hollywood:

“I was on that for four or five years with Warners and then it got moved to New Line, right before we were about to go into production...I think New Line’s view of what they wanted and my view of what I wanted were very different. I wanted to do a drama with horror elements, more like The Shining. I think they wanted to do something more [pure horror] like Annabelle [from the Conjuring films]. That was essentially the disconnect.”

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Image via Warner Bros.

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Despite Fukunaga leaving the project three weeks before production was set to begin in 2015, he retained a screenwriting credit and It would go on to become a massive critical success, with Andy Muschietti signing on to direct a film that would earn itself $702 million worldwide and a 2019 sequel. Fukunaga continues to work with the film’s producers, Dan Lin and Roy Lee, saying that "if [he] was a difficult director, they wouldn’t necessarily want to be working with [him]."

But leaving IT certainly hasn’t slowed Fukunaga’s career down at all. The writer/director/producer would go on to work once again in television, executive producing and writing for The Alienist — for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy — and directing Maniac for Netflix. And now, with No Time to Die finally just around the corner, Fukunaga will hopefully be able to add even more accolades to his list of accomplishments.

No Time to Die premieres exclusively in theaters on October 8.

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