A new project from True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto is in the works, with actor Matthew McConaughey, who appeared in the show's first season. This time, though, the duo is heading in a different direction, exploring a different genre. Reports say it's a sports drama with a focus on football, centered on two characters who are brothers.
McConaughey and his Dazed and Confused co-star Cole Hauser (he played one of the seniors along with Ben Affleck taunting juniors in the Richard Linklater comedy) will serve as executive producers with backing from Skydance Sports, which recently merged with Paramount.
There were also reports of Pizzolatto working on one more project with McConaughey, an investigative thriller film based on the series of books featuring the fictitious investigator Mike Hammer. This, too, is backed by Skydance, but their Entertainment division.
Pizzolatto's work on the first season of True Detective, along with the performances of McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, and the rest of the cast, was met with near unanimous critical and audience acclaim.
It's not clear whether the team is going for a contemporary take on the popular detective character or whether they'll stay true to the retro settings of the original books considering its author Mickey Spillane set in his stories in a much older time, specifically the late 1940s, in a post-war atmosphere. If the project comes to fruition, with the above settings intact, and with McConaughey and Pizzolatto, it could turn out to be one of the most exciting properties on the digital space
Meanwhile, McConaughey is returning to screen after a six-year hiatus, with Paul Greengrass' The Lost Bus, on Apple TV+. He is joined in the cast by America Ferrera, who plays one of the school teachers determined to save the children, along with Yul Vazquez, Ashlie Atkinson and Spencer Watson. Brad Ingelsby, Gregory Goodman, and Jason Blum (of Blumhouse Productions) are jointly producing the film with actress Jamie Lee Curtis ("The Bear", "Halloween"), with Johnson serving as executive producer.
McConaughey's last full-fledged lead role was in Guy Ritchie's acclaimed gangster drama The Gentlemen.