‘True Detective’ Star Taylor Kitsch to Make Directorial Debut With ‘Pieces’

It took a few years and a few fumbles before Taylor Kitsch finally made good use of his promising talents. Following the success of Friday Night Lights, Kitsch was miscast in everything from John Carter to an X-Men spinoff, but his recent roles in Lone Survivor and True Detective Season 2 have mostly delivered on that earlier promise. Kitsch is keeping the momentum going by re-teaming with Lone Survivor director Peter Berg, who will produce the actor’s directorial debut — a drug drama that puts Kitsch in familiar territory.

Deadline reports that Kitsch is set to make his directing debut with Pieces, based on his own screenplay. The actor will also star in the film, which centers on a trio of close friends in Detroit who find their lives dangerously disrupted when they come across a cartel’s drug shipment. That seems to be in the same wheelhouse as Savages, the Oliver Stone film in which Kitsch also starred, and which pit him against a Mexican drug cartel.

Kitsch will produce the film alongside Peter Berg and his Film44 banner. Berg previously produced the acclaimed football drama series Friday Night Lights, which launched Kitsch’s career, and later cast the actor in Battleship and Lone Survivor.

If anyone should know how to make the best use of Kitsch’s talents, it’s Kitsch himself, and hopefully Pieces will deliver some better material than his previous streak of underwhelming roles. It was only really recently that the actor began to remind us why we were so enamored with him in the first place, and though True Detective’s second season was pretty divisive, Kitsch was perfectly cast as a brooding, troubled cop.