Here's Why David Cronenberg Turned Down TRUE DETECTIVE Season 2

The second season of HBO's True Detective suffered perhaps the biggest case of sophomore slump that I've ever seen. I can't think of another property which had such a beloved first entry followed by such a disappointing follow-up. And yes, there were people out there who practically reveled in tearing the show apart for one reason or another, but as someone who was legitimately hoping it'd be good from the start and was willing to give it a few episodes before I started complaining, I still ended up being hugely disappointed with it. I think the writing was the worst part about it, and it seemed to me that showrunner/creator Nic Pizzolatto simply didn't have enough time to create something all by himself before his deadline arrived.

I'm not the only one who didn't like the writing in the second season. Director David Cronenberg was offered the directing gig on the second season premiere (a job that eventually went to Justin Lin), but he ended up turning it down. As he told the Reykjavik International Film Festival (via Indiewire):

"The heat is in TV. Last year I was approached to direct the first episode of the second season of True Detective, I considered it but I thought that the script was bad, so I didn’t do it. In TV, the director is just a traffic cop, but on the other hand it is work and there’s a lot of it."

It's rare to hear people in the industry talk negatively about projects or writers because they so often want to protect their own asses so they might work with those people (or their studios, etc.) down the line, but Cronenberg apparently doesn't give a crap about that and just straight up tells it like it is. I like it.

I obviously agree with Cronenberg on this one, but where do you stand on True Detective season 2?