FX snaps up "This Is America" director Hiro Murai for his own development deal

By William Hughes | May 11, 2018 | 12:05am

Aux Features TV

Donald Glover/Childish Gambino made a resoundingly successful grab for the internet’s often-fleeting attention this weekend, compounding a great SNL performance with the release of his much-talked-about new music video, “This Is America.” The video—which features Glover cheerfully strutting through a violence-filled warehouse, and which has been viewed more than 60 million times on YouTube in just the last week—was directed by music video, TV, and commercial director Hiro Murai, who’s also an executive producer on Glover’s FX series Atlanta. Now, the network has announced that it’s scooping up Murai for itself, signing a first-look development deal with the director that’ll see him developing new projects for TV.

Murai is a long-time collaborator with Glover; most notably, he recently directed Atlanta’s deeply weird “Teddy Perkins” (along with most of the rest of the show’s second season), and has lent his talent to recent critical darlings like Barry and Legion. Given how much Good Stuff he’s worked on in just the last year, Murai’s pretty clearly a rising talent in TV; it’ll be interesting to see what projects he starts putting together once he strikes out more fully on his own.