HBO is bringing back True Detective with Issa López and Barry Jenkins at the helm

Tigers Are Not Afraid's López will reportedly serve as both writer and director for the pilot of True Detective: Night Country

By William Hughes  |  March 19, 2022 | 2:19am
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HBO is bringing back True Detective with Issa López and Barry Jenkins at the helm
Left: Issa López (Photo: Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for NALIP), Right: Barry Jenkins (Photo: Jesse Grant/Getty Images)

It’s been more than three years now since HBO rolled out a new season of True Detective, Nic Pizzolatto’s once-zeitgeist-seizing true crime anthology. And while we may be 8 years distant now from ubiquitous “time is a flat circle” jokes, breathless appreciations for bravura tracking shots, and fevered attempts to tie the franchise into the Cthulhu mythos, the series maintains a certain mystique—not least of which because of the work Mahershala Ali and his cohorts did on the show’s inconsistent, but interesting, third outing back in 2019

Now it sounds like the series might be coming back, with one of Ali’s old collaborators at the helm. Deadline reports that HBO is apparently gearing up for a revival, or possible spin-off, of the series—supposedly titled True Detective: Night Country—that’ll be headed up by Tigers Are Not Afraid writer/director Issa López and Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins.

Details about the series are being kept under wraps, although HBO president Carey Bloys did hint recently that the network might be trying to get back into the “grim meditations on time, memory, loss, etc. through the lens of detective work” game. Per Deadline, López will write, direct, and produce the show’s pilot, while Jenkins will serve as an executive producer. (The Oscar-winner has been working a bit in TV of late; he was nominated for an Emmy for his recent The Underground Railroad.)

López has been an established novelist and filmmaker in Mexico for years now, although she’s just started to break into American markets through films like 2019's Tigers. Given what a career-boosting effect earlier True Detective seasons have sometimes had for creators—and how divisive responses to the series have been across its various eras—it’ll be interesting to see what reception she’s greeted with here.

No word yet on what involvement, if any, Pizzolatto will have with the series. He most recently penned the screenplay for 2021 Jake Gyllenhaal feature The Guilty.

 
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