The trouble with Big Little Lies Season 2 apparently ran far deeper than Ice Cream-gate. According to a new report, HBO and writer David E. Kelley are said to have reneged on their choice of Andrea Arnold as Season 2 director, eventually discarding most of her contributions in favor of Season 1 director Jean-Marc Vallée re-editing episodes into his own style.
An in-depth report from IndieWire chronicles behind-the-scenes turmoil on the second season, which involved heavy miscommunication between Arnold, who was told she has been hired to bring her own visual style to the show, and Vallée, who returned from his work on HBOs Sharp Objects and took over the post-production process. The conflict reportedly became much more widespread after HBO and Kelley invited Vallée to move editing from Arnolds requested London to his own team in Montreal, and subsequently ordered 17 additional days of photography.
Arnold was present for the reshoots—as per Directors Guild of America rules—but “Vallée was now an extremely hands-on EP dictating not only what would be shot, but how it would be shot, oversight that Arnold never had during the initial shoot,” according to Indiewire. Additional flashbacks were added and the story tweaked, while Arnolds more nuanced, character-based filmmaking was often trimmed to fit episode lengths, discarding the “ephemeral stuff.”
The source of the miscommunication between Arnold and the network is unclear—the report details that HBO was initially interested in Arnold putting her own visual and tonal stamp on the series, while stars/executive producers Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman were thrilled with her work. The network was also accommodating of Arnold bringing in her own cinematographers and creatiRead More – Source
[contf] [contfnew] 
Vanity Fair
[contfnewc] [contfnewc]
