G is for: “The Girl Who Played With Fire”
The closest thing that Fincher had made to a franchise tentpole since “Alien3,” “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” was the director’s adaptation of Stieg Larsson‘s worldwide best-seller, and Sony were high enough on the franchise that development on the sequel, “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” was underway even before the first film hit theaters at Christmas 2011. But the movie underperformed: $200 million is pretty good for such dark material, but not when you spend over $100 million on the project, and Sony and MGM lost money. Nevertheless, development continued, with “Seven” scribe Andrew Kevin Walker hired to rewrite Steve Zaillian‘s original script, but rumors have flown that the meticulous Fincher wouldn’t be involved if the script moved forward. Nevertheless, in an interview earlier in the month, the director was optimistic, saying the studio “already has spent millions of dollars on the right and the script so it will result in something. The script that we now have has huge potential, I can reveal as much it is extremely different from the book.” But with the director tied up into 2016, if it does move forward, we’d still be surprised if he’d be involved.
H is for: “Hard Boiled” and “Heavy Metal”
A pair of graphic novel adaptations here. Back in 2001, Fincher was going to team with Nicolas Cage for an adaptation of Frank Miller‘s graphic novel “Hard Boiled,” about a cyborg tax collector out to save an enslaved robotic race. The project, which was intended to be very CGI heavy to an almost revolutionary extent, never happened, though Miller mumbled about helming the film himself in the late ’00s, and South African director Mukunda Michael Dewil has been involved more recently. Meanwhile, “Heavy Metal” is a long-time passion project, an R-rated anthology animation remaking the 1981 project (itself an adaptation of the popular 1970s sci-fi magazine). Initially dropped by Paramount (apparently as a bargaining chip over the running time for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), it moved over to Columbia, and Fincher enlisted A-list colleagues like Guillermo Del Toro, Zack Snyder, Gore Verbinski and even James Cameron to helm segments, but the studio balked at the idea of adult animation and dropped the project. Robert Rodriguez picked up the rights, and is currently considering a TV version for his El Rey network.
I is for: “In Bed With Madonna” (aka “Truth Or Dare”)
Famously and unhappily, Fincher graduated from music videos to features with “Alien3,” but he nearly did so a few years earlier with an even more unlikely project. Fincher made his name thanks to several Madonna music videos, and was originally set to direct “In Bed With Madonna” (or “Madonna: Truth Or Dare“), the behind-the-scenes concert movie chronicling the megastar’s 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour). But according to a Vanity Fair article at the time, Fincher and Madonna were romantically involved in advance of the shoot, and when they broke up, Fincher exited the project, being replaced by Alek Keshishian. The film went on to be the most successful documentary film in history up to that point.
J is for: “Jobs”
Earlier this year, it was briefly mooted that the director would re-team with “Social Network” writer Aaron Sorkin for another tech-world yarn, a long-gestating biopic of late Apple-founder Steve Jobs that’s set up at Sony. Fincher wanted to cast Christian Bale in the lead role, but it was really his fee (he wanted $10 million upfront) that caused the problem, and he dropped out, replaced by Danny Boyle. Fincher told the Guardian recently that the project “was definitely a possibility, but it got very sideways very fast.”
K is for: “The Killer”
Between “Zodiac” and “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button,” Fincher was attached to this adaptation of a French graphic novel, about a professional assassin losing his sanity. “The Messenger” co-writer Alessandro Camon was penning the script, with Paramount and Brad Pitt‘s Plan B producing, but nothing much has been heard of the project since, likely as a result of the post-BB fallout between Fincher and the studio.
L is for: “The Lookout”
Scott Frank‘s noir script “The Lookout” —about a young man with memory issues forced into helping with a robbery— was one of the hottest properties of the early 2000s, with Sam Mendes, Steven Spielberg and Michael Mann among the directors considering the project. Fincher stuck with it longer than most, boarding the project after “Panic Room.” When he eventually departed, Frank took over and made his directorial debut on the project himself (it’s very good and underseen), and has said that the version of the script he filmed was the one he developed with Fincher.