Fukunaga’s vision was sorely missed from this summer’s second season of True Detective. He’s credited as executive producer, still, but when we spoke, says he hasn’t even watched the second season. (“I’ll get to it. We just finished Beasts of No Nation, like, two weeks ago.”) One might think that his unequivocal success with that show would’ve allowed him to take his pick of any project out there, but as we’ve seen with the dissolution of his efforts to bring Stephen King’s It to the big screen as a two-part feature film, that’s not the case. About that project: “I’ll just go with the company line,” Fukunaga says, “’We wanted to make different films.’ And it’s better to stop before than make both of our lives miserable trying to find something in the middle, that neither one wanted.”
It’s a huge disappointment to both the filmmaker, and those fans interested in seeing where he’d take the terrifying source material. “That was the biggest bummer,” he says. He genuinely sounds pained. “[Co-writer] Chase Palmer and I spent a lot of time with that screenplay. Stephen King’s book is near and dear to us. We really wanted to honor it with a real sort of dramatic thriller, and it was just an uphill battle.”
Beasts will be the first feature film to be released day-and-date by Netflix—i.e. in theaters (in a partnership with distributor Bleeker Street Media) and on the streaming service’s website. Fukunaga has embraced the trend-setting acquisitions deal (made in March to the tune of $12 million, twice the film’s budget), though of course he’d prefer people see Beasts on the big screen. “There weren’t a lot of people that we felt were the right partners. There wasn’t a long list.”
Netflix’s move sparked boycotts from theater chains AMC, Regal, Cinemark and Carmike, who objected to the violation of the 90-day theatrical/home window, though many smaller venues, like the Alamo Drafthouse, will play it. Unfazed, Fukunaga says he found the “potential”—i.e. the eyeballs—that Netflix promises to be attractive. “It was obviously a risk, because this is the first time this has ever happened, but when you think about what the life of the film would have been, had it had a more traditional art house release… it would be generous to say that hundreds of thousands, or even tens of thousands, of people would see it. It would maybe be a lot less than that. So, with Netflix’s promise to do a concerted theatrical campaign and release of the film, as well as showing it on their streaming service to their 62 million subscribers, we knew instantly that more people would see the film than any other way.”
Fresh face Attah leads a small army of nonprofessional actors cast in Beasts of No Nation
In the end, like many modern moviemakers, Fukunaga believes that it doesn’t pay to be picky about screen size. “This film was made to be in the cinema. But Sin Nombre, Jane Eyre—more people saw those at home and on their computers than in the theaters. So as long as it has a life in the theater, people have the opportunity to see it in the theater if they choose to.”
Beasts of No Nation’s grim depiction of both a country rotten with corruption and despair, and a threadbare humanity, riddled with bullet holes, presents other intellectual challenges. Fukunaga is savvy enough to anticipate the questions he might face about his choices. “Inevitably, there’s going to be some critique: ‘Why this subject matter? As an outsider, why look at Africa this way?’”
The answer? “It’s something that exists. It’s something that’s taking place, even now. It’s something that hasn’t really been, I feel, explored in a naturalistic way that is also still accessible to people who haven’t experienced it. Sometimes the stories are darker stories. It doesn’t mean they all have to be that way. This one is, but I can’t apologize for it.”
The power of Fukunaga’s words and images transcends the facts themselves. “The whole point is for somebody who’s only read about this in a headline to actually walk away feeling something for these characters. You feel that emotional connection—the universal human connection—from across the globe. It’s a difficult experience to communicate. If this film can do that, then it’s succeeded.” MM
Beasts of No Nation opens in theaters and is available for streaming on October 16, 2015, courtesy of Netflix. This article appears in MovieMaker‘s Fall 2015 issue.
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