| Kyle Buchanan Pop Culture Reporter | | Hi movie fans! It's your faithful Carpetbagger. | | This weekend brings us a lot of great independent films like Jacques Audiard's western "The Sisters Brothers," the subversive Keira Knightley period piece "Colette," and the chatty documentary "Tea with the Dames," featuring Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. Still, it seems like the movie on everybody's mind right now is the new James Bond project, which just set Cary Joji Fukunaga to direct. | | Bond fans have begun debating whether Fukunaga, who directed "Beasts of No Nation," the first season of "True Detective" and this weekend's new Netflix series "Maniac," is the right fit for their franchise. What I'm more curious about is how Fukunaga will get along with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the notoriously controlling producers who own the rights to Britain's most famous secret agent. They did, after all, just part ways with the director Danny Boyle, who was first hired to helm the new Bond film. | | Industry observers expected that after those creative differences, Broccoli and Wilson would replace Boyle with a more pliant filmmaker. Fukunaga is not that. As his "Maniac" press tour has proven, Fukunaga is prone to questioning every single creative choice on his productions, no matter how small. "When someone comes into a meeting and says, 'This is an orange,' Cary will say, 'Prove to me that this is an orange,'" Fukunaga's art director Mara LePere-Schloop said in Willa Paskin's recent Times Magazine profile of the director. "It's a very rigorous thing, and it will drive some people insane." | | Fukunaga claims that challenging nature is the reason he was bounced off of "It," which was supposed to be his first big studio film. (He was replaced by Andy Muschietti, and the film made boatloads.) Now, Bond will be Fukunaga's first blockbuster salvo. Has Fukunaga taken on this franchise film to prove to Hollywood that he can be a team player? Or have the Bond producers decided that change is good, and they're willing to let a needler like Fukunaga poke at their prized possession? For the first time, I'm not exactly sure what to expect from a James Bond film, and maybe that's exciting enough on its own. | | |
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