David Fincher in Talks to Direct Gone Girl

Posted by on January 23rd, 2013   Filed under: Books/Comics, Rumours, Thriller
Source: Variety

By now Sony has acknowledged that David Fincher’s 2011 remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a minor disappointment at the box office, making just over $100 million domestically. Not bad for an R-rated thriller, but not great for a movie based on a book that supposedly sold 30 million copies. It’s still unclear if we will get to see any of the sequels remade, but Fincher has an option to direct the second movie if it happens (which is said to be his favourite). In the meantime he’s been keeping busy with the House of Cards series for Netflix and a potential 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea remake. That project seems to be stalled, however, and this week we have learned that Fincher may instead adapt another upcoming thriller based on a best-selling book.

According to Variety, Fincher is in talks to direct Gone Girl, based on the novel by former Entertainment Weekly writer Gillian Flynn. The plot revolves around a man who is accused of murdering his wife after she mysteriously disappears on their fifth wedding anniversary. Reese Witherspoon is on board as a producer although it’s unclear if she is also looking to star in the film.

The book sparked a Hollywood bidding war after landing at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for eight weeks and selling some 2 million copies. It seems a little surprising that Fincher would take on another thriller of this nature, although without having read the book I can’t say what might be unique about it. Either way, it’s clear that the popularity of the book does not necessarily guarantee a box office hit. Are you interested in seeing Fincher take on this project or would you prefer to see him direct something else?



  • So it looks like he’s not returning to direct the sequel to dragon tattoo. Goll’darn.

  • La Menthe

    I’m just glad he makes another thriller, and not some rash and tedious drama like The Social Network. But I do agree with piggy, I would rather see him make the sequel to the great The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It was no mind-blowing film, but it was a pleasure to be able to just sit down and watch a good crafted thriller by a first-class director. It also helped considerably that I am from Scandinavia, seeing how he seamlessly captured the spirit of the region with the cold cinematography, the gloomy and distant music, and the overall Scandinavia setting and the characters’ behaviors.

  • T. Heilman

    We all know he can make a fine film out of a potboiler (GWTDT) and can turn a forgettable thriller into something watchable (Panic Room). I am more curious what his interpretation of an 18th Century, science fiction/steampunk novel would be. However, seeing how Del Toro can’t get his Lovecraft adaptation made it is no surprise 20,000 Leagues will likely stay in development hell forever. It’s a shame so many filmmakers are unable to have their passion projects realized. No surprise though, it is safer to adapt a contemporary bestseller. The cliched expression “making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” comes to mind. No great art ever came out of making a safe bet.

  • T

    Actually, 20,000 Leagues, was written in the latter half of the 19th Century. My bad.

  • La Menthe

    How does the fact that it is made in the latter half of the 19th century change its definition?

  • Chris Morgan

    La Menthe, you calling The Social Network “some rash and tedious drama” made a little sick in my mouth. I liked Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but it’s nowehere near Fincher’s finer stuff, of which I believe The Social Network, Zodiac and Se7en belong in.

  • La Menthe

    I’m sorry to say it Chris, but I actually feel that The Social Network doesn’t belong in there at all, and that it’s only topped by Alien 3 as Fincher’s weakest film. Everybody raved about it, but I really didn’t see anything extraordinary with it at all. Maybe because the topic itself was dull?

    On the other hand, it’s good to see you mention Se7en and Zodiac among his best works, as I agree with you here. My favorite Fincher-film, although it hurts me every time I have to admit it, is in fact The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. For me, TCCOBB is the best romantic epic since Dr. Zhivago. The contradictory impact the film had on me and everyone else (who seem to hate it, rather than just dislike it), seemed to partly lie in the fact that people didn’t watch it as it was: a romantic epic (because let’s be honest, you have to encourage yourself to the dripping sentimentalism that you are about to be presented on the screen when you watch a film like that). But most importantly, and also as a consequence of the first reason, was the emotional impact it had on me. I watched it 3 times in the theaters, and the effect it had on me was amazing. I plunged into the atmosphere of the scenes, and felt with stimulation, admiration, ecstasy and grief everything the protagonist experienced. And, most notably, I felt attached to the atmosphere in many of the scenes (this is one of the reasons why I liked TGWTDT — he encapsulates me in a world that I find enormously familiar and intimate, yet distinguished and artistic). When Benjamin Button is rejected by Daisy when he first visits her, who rhetorically asks what he thought would have happened, and is answered by “I thought I’d come here and sweep you off your feet or something”, every bone in my body sympathizes with the feelings of Benjamin. When a nervous Benjamin, knowing he will go home empty handed, is overwhelmed by Daisy’s erotic and seductive dance in a New York park, I sense all of his contained feelings of exhilaration and arousal. When Benjamin Button is sitting up at 4 AM in a kitchen in Murmansk, drinking tea with Tilda Swinton, I associate it with my own memories as child sitting up at night, drinking tea and watching the sun coming up (as awfully sappy as this may sound). And the list goes on.

    People misunderstood the film. They thought that because BB aged backwards, it was about the ‘different’ experience he had, and pointed out that it was all the same things as a normal person experienced when he/she aged normally. But the film was not about Benjamin Button, but about us; it was a film about growing up, most importantly about youth (from 5-30), but only told it the other way around. The reason Fincher did this was so that he didn’t have to make a children’s movie; he wanted to present the themes of the film in the embodiment of an adult, so that it becomes easier for the viewers the film is projected to, dults, to associate themselves with the character. Even the second half of the film, when BB becomes old (but psychically young), it associates itself with youth, which BB’s young body is a brilliant illustration of. And if you think about at how he recognizes getting closer to the end of his life, and how he responds to it, it’s precisely how we as young people visualize it.

    And now I just wrote two whole paragraphs about a topic that had nothing to do with our discussion. I apologize, and I hope that you, despite my rambling, got the answers you needed.