Cary Joji Fukunaga's unrealized projects
Over the course of his career, American filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga has ammased a number of projects he worked on that never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction.
[8] On May 7, 2011, screenwriter Jeff Vintar tweeted that Fukunaga was in talks to direct his sci-fi script Spaceless for producer Gore Verbinski and Universal.
"[4] On May 24, 2011, Variety reported that Fukunaga was hired by Focus Features to co-write (with Chase Palmer) and direct No Blood, No Guts, No Glory, a heist film set during the Civil War.
[16][17] With the help of writer Chase Palmer, Fukunaga developed the script for the first film, inserting a lot of their own childhoods into the story and updating the initial setting from the 1950s to the 1980s.
[18] Before Fukunaga was hired to direct the James Bond film No Time to Die, he had been considered as a potential candidate for the previous entry in the series, Spectre.
[20] In August 2013, DreamWorks Pictures attached Fukunaga to direct a film adaptation of the unpublished book The Noble Assassin by Paul Nix, which tells the wartime story of French aristocrat-turned-anti-Nazi saboteur Robert de La Rochefoucauld.
[23] In February 2014, it was reported that 20th Century Fox had preemptively bought a pitch sold by Fukunaga for yet-titled project set in a contemporary wartime context.
[27] After True Detective aired, Fukunaga was hired to adapt and direct Stanley Kubrick's unmade Napoleon film as a Steven Spielberg-produced 6-hour miniseries for HBO.
[28][29] Fukunaga confirmed the reports in 2018, saying that he was researching at the library in Kubrick's St Albans home,[18][27] and spending lots of time with his surviving family members.
In 2017, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed Fukunaga was in negotiations to direct Working Title and Universal's adaptation of Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima, a drama about the lead-up to the dropping of the first atomic bomb.
[36] In 2020, it was reported that a TV series scripted by Fukunaga and Nick Osborne based on James Fenimore Cooper's historic novel The Last of the Mohicans was in the works at HBO Max.
Nicole Kassell was on board to direct the episodes, executive producing alongside Fukunaga, Osborne, Alex Goldstone, Bard Dorros and Michael Sugar.
The script by Frank John Hughes (with revisions by Fukunaga), follows the story of five rogue police officers who formulate a plan to rob three criminal strongholds in one night while dealing with the effects of the city-wide blackout.
