In a brief and terribly vague interview with MTV’s Splash News page, comic book superstar Brian Michael Bendis says that he still has hopes that the movie based on his outstanding graphic novel with co-writer Marc Andreyko “Torso,” about Eliot Ness’ post-Untouchables search for a horrific serial killer, will actually happen. This is really an about face from skeptical comments Bendis made a few months ago, so maybe there’s some fortune on the horizon. The movie was originally set up at Paramount with Matt Damon, Rachel Adams, Casey Affleck, and Gary Oldman attached (though Fincher once called most of the casting names, “rumors“). He said they had a green light last winter and then, three days later, the plug was pulled and Paramount let the rights lapse. (Many have speculated that this was due to the contentious working relationship between Fincher and his “Zodiac”/”Benjamin Button” bosses at Paramount. Basically, that they dropped “Torso” as a goodbye fuck you after the difficult ‘Button’ post-production process).
The rights to the movie reverted back to Bendis and Andreyko, and he says that it’s “not dead yet,” suggesting all the principal players, Fincher et. al, could come back into the fold. We remember asking Fincher about the movie during a Film Society of Lincoln Center screening of the director’s cut of “Zodiac” a while back. He said that the script, by Ehren Kruger (which supposedly any new version will jettison), took this kind of talking head approach, with every character talking about Ness in a different way, which would have been really weird and cool.
But if “Torso” gets rolling again, will Fincher even have time to do it?
In addition to “The Social Network” aka the Facebook movie, that’s currently in production, his revamp of “Heavy Metal” is still somewhere in the development pipeline and it was just announced today that he’ll be tackling his first television project.
It’s a remake of a 1990 BBC miniseries called “House of Cards,” a kind of evil “West Wing,” focusing on the blackmail and backdoor shenanigans of parliament during the end of the Margaret Thatcher era. The new version will be an hour-long series, with the action transported to America and Eric Roth, Fincher’s “Benjamin Button” screenwriter, will serve as co-executive producer. It’s a fair assumption that Fincher will carve out some time to shoot the pilot (like Bryan Singer did for “House,” Barry Sonnenfeld did for “Pushing Daisies” and “The Tick,” Brett Ratner did for “Prison Break,” etc.), and the series is being shopped around to networks soon. Color us intrigued. — Drew Taylor
