For the bulk of his career, David Fincher wasn’t exactly prolific. After his debut with “Alien³” in 1995, like Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott, he’s attached himself to dozens of projects over the years, often ones that prove to be difficult to get green lit. Not that there’s any sign of this letting up now. Entering a purple patch in his career (next Christmas’ “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” will be his fourth film in five years) the director has a wide array of potential projects on the horizon including “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea,” “Heavy Metal,” “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” HBO series “Mindhunter” and who knows what else percolating further down the line.
READ MORE: Best To Worst: David Fincher’s Complete Music Videography Ranked
But what of the projects that slipped through the cracks? As soon as “Se7en” pushed him onto the A-list, there have been a number of intriguing projects linked to Fincher that never saw the light of day. Whether falling apart just as they seemed ready to go, or never quite getting the support from those who hold the Hollywood purse strings, they provide an fascinating look at avenues and genres Fincher has yet to explore on screen (sci-fi and comedy) as well as material that fits very much into the thematic and aesthetic wheelhouse that is associated with his name. With “The Social Network” hitting theaters today, we’ve rounded up five that we’d still love to see some day.
“Rendezvous With Rama”
Let’s face it, should Fincher ever make this movie it will be his Stanley Kubrick-esque science-fiction space epic. Not only was the project based off Arthur C. Clarke’s novel (he wrote ‘2001’), the picture has space odyssey written all over it. Shepherded under the aegis of actor Morgan Freeman for over a decade, the actor admitted to MTV in 2007, “it’s a very intellectual science fiction, a very difficult book to translate cinematically.” Making the sell even harder he said, “There are no guns, no explosions. Although it’s fiction, it’s all based on pure science.”
An opaque sci-fi novel about mankind’s awakening relationship with the universe and zero action? Paging Terrence Malick maybe? Otherwise yeah, we see how it would incredibly difficult to get a studio on board. The novels (four of them in total) focused on a 30-mile-long hollow cylindrical alien spaceship that is discovered in our solar system and a group of space explorers sent out to investigate, who find out its intentions and unlock its mysteries. But since the novels had little action to speak of, the project could have ended up more “Solaris” then “Sunshine” (and neither project was very profitable at the box-office) and it never got off the ground.
Freeman spent years developing the passion project (he once wanted to direct himself) until he convinced his “Se7en” director to take a crack at it in 2007, but by the following year Fincher had pronounced the project dead. Freeman had been in an auto accident a few months prior and the filmmaker had said even after all this time there was no script.
Our only hope is that Alfonso Cuarón’s action sci-fi film “Gravity” gets made and somehow does gangbusters at the box-office and then studios start rifling through their drawers for similar projects. But one really can’t imagine the slow, arty and hypnotic “2001: A Space Odyssey” being green lit in this day and age, let alone a picture that sounds like its not-too-distant cousin, that is unless some superstar cast comes on board and those names will sadly have to be much bigger than Morgan Freeman.
“They Fought Alone” aka “Fertig”
David Fincher, “Chinatown” scribe Robert Towne, Brad Pitt and WWII — can we see this film made like, tomorrow, please?
Originally titled “Fertig” and then changed to “They Fought Alone,” the story centered on Wendell Fertig, a civil engineer and American Colonel who led a rogue American-Filipino “barefoot” guerrilla force on the Japanese-occupied, southern Philippine island of Mindanao during World War II. The script was written by Willam Nicholson, a co-writer of “Gladiator,” and while it was supposed to be Fincher’s post-“Panic Room” project, the film obviously never materialized. One has to wonder with “The Thin Red Line” and HBO’s “The Pacific,” has this WWII setting been done too much? Then again, this tale is about a bare-bones outfit — they allegedly made bullets from curtain rods; telegraph wires from iron fence — and how they took to the jungle to survive and fight the war on their own terms after the U.S. Army forces had already surrendered.
Yes, Brad Pitt was in Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist WWII comedy “Inglourious Basterds,” but we would like to end our lifetime seeing Pitt in one gritty and visceral WWII film, and who better than under the direction of Fincher. Yet “They Fought Alone,” has been kicking around since late 2001, so the chances of it ever being made seem slim. There was a glimmer of hope in 2009 during discussions of the deluxe DVD edition of “Chinatown” — Fincher did a commentary track — when Towne noted the two were mutual admirers of each other’s work and said, “we’re” trying to make a movie together” (and Fincher had revealed months earlier that “Fertig” was indeed that project). But it’s been almost a decade (Tom Cruise was interested at one point) and as Fincher keeps piling on new projects and Towne continues to age, we’re not sure this one will ever happen. Though to be honest, simple premise alone, we’re there the day it hits screens and months before as its champion.
“Torso”
On the surface, the “Torso” project — a true-crime graphic novel about Eliot Ness’ post-Untouchables/Al Capone days — would entrench Fincher deeply back into his familiar serial-killer world. Written by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko, the novels placed Ness in Cleveland years after Capone had been brought to justice and centered on a true-life serial killer taunting the detective with notes regarding the hacked-off and lifeless torsos that had been popping up in the city. While ostensibly about a psychotic murderer, the project also sounded more in line with Fincher’s interest in obsessions, among other themes. “I’m not interested in the serial killer thing,” he told MTV in 2007. “I’m interested in Eliot Ness and the de-mythologizing [of him] because ‘The Untouchables’ was only two-three years of (his) story. There’s a whole other, much sinister downside to it. We want to make the ‘Citizen Kane’ of cop movies.”
Gestating since 2004, “Torso” looked like it had found its missing body parts in late 2008 when it appeared like Matt Damon would be taking the lead and Rachel McAdams, Casey Affleck, and Gary Oldman would be joining the cast (though Fincher once called most of the casting names “rumors“), but the film fell victim — like many do — to studio politics. Fincher was warring with Paramount at the time over the exorbitant running time of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” and in a game of retributive who-would-fold-first, the studio let the rights to ‘Torso’ lapse in a reported “fuck you” to the director. Fincher responded by taking his “Heavy Metal” project (which Paramount had already dropped as an earlier slap on the wrist) to Sony where it looks like he’s found a new home (‘Social Network’ and ‘Dragon Tattoo’ are set up there and it’s the first studio where he’s made back-to-back projects). Last we heard, while ‘Torso’ rights had lapsed, the producers — Bill Mechanic, the former Fox exec ballsy enough to green light “Fight Club” — still felt the film would be made, and a few months later, Bendis (who now owns the rights again) said the same thing, but there’s been little movement in over a year. Whether Fincher ever decides to return to the material remains to be seen, but the cast alone is enough for us to buy a ticket years in advance.