Denial, anger, bargaining, depression? Many are still trying to accept the chances of a third season of the David Fincher-produced serial killer series “Mindhunter” on Netflix are slim to none. The show is based on the very real group at the FBI that developed the agency’s profiling methods and signs of compulsive mass murderers after interviewing them in a prison setting about their lives and why they kill.
Fincher, who did double duty as director and showrunner, seemed to kill the show itself, a combination of being exhausted and being aware its ratings didn’t justify its budget. Director Andrew Dominik (“Killing Me Softly“), who directed some of “Mindhunter” season two, recently gave Collider some insight into where the series had been planning on going. The two pioneers of FBI profiling would have headed to Hollywood to “hook up” with directors Jonathan Demme (“Silence of The Lambs“) and Michael Mann (“Manhunter“) as part of the sharing of the FBI’s findings with the public.
READ MORE: David Fincher Explains Why ‘Mindhunter’ Ended Too Soon: “I Was Exhausted”
“What they were going to do with season three was they were going to go [to] Hollywood. So one of them was going to be hooking up with Jonathan Demme and the other one was going to be hooking up with Michael Mann. And it was all going to be about profiling making it into the sort of zeitgeist, the public consciousness. It would’ve been… That was the season everyone was really waiting for to do, with when they sort of get out of the basement and start.”
The directors in question, Mann and Demme, both tackled serial killer thrillers based on the work of author Thomas Harris, featuring FBI agents taking down infamous, but fictional, murderers. Their respective films helped usher-in gritty and mostly grounded crime stories thanks to being influenced by real cases and how the FBI would operate in those situations.
Dominik is continuing his relationship with the streamer as his NC-17 biopic of actress/model Marilyn Monore, “Blonde,” starring Ana de Armas, Adrian Brody, and Bobby Cannavale is expected to drop sometime this year.