In 2000, David Fincher was one of Hollywood’s premier directors, known for such classic thrillers as “Fight Club,” “The Game,” and “Se7en” (which gets a 4k re-release this month). So why on earth did Warner Bros. think he was a good fit to helm their “Harry Potter” adaptations?
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Believe it or not, it’s a pitch meeting that really happened, and Fincher dished on it in a new interview with Variety. “I was asked to come in and talk to them about how I would do ‘Harry Potter,’” the director told the outlet. “I remember saying, ‘I just don’t want to do the clean Hollywood version of it. I want to do something that looks a lot more like “Withnail and I,” and I want it to be kind of creepy.’” No surprise there, and it’s no surprise that Warner Bros. didn’t want to adapt J.K. Rowling‘s young adult series that way. “They were like, ‘We want Thom Browne schooldays by way of “Oliver’.””
At the time, Fincher was coming off of his adaptation of Chuck Pahlinuk‘s 1996 novel “Fight Club,” something more catered to the director’s sensibilities. And he went on to do similar works later, adapting “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” and “Gone Girl” in 2011 and 2014, respectively. Was it each novel’s popularity, which guaranteed a movie audience, that drew Fincher to those projects? “Is there a built-in audience? That’s somebody else’s job,” said Fincher. “Those books get sold to movie studios when it’s shown that there’s a built-in audience, so I’m usually coming into the food chain after it’s been decided that this is something tasty.” For Fincher, it’s more about subject matter. “I was interested in “Gone Girl” in spite of the fact that it was a bestseller,” he continued. “I liked the idea of punishment for our narcissistic leanings as it relates to finding a mate.”
As for “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, “I’m much more fond of “Chinatown” and the shoe leather in that than I am in any hacker thing,” Fincher admitted. “But I loved this broken girl who’s given a chance to do research with this guy that she’s not quite so sure about. And I don’t even know that he’s kind to her; I think he just treats her the way you want to be treated, and for her, this is so revelatory. And if you’ve ever been to Sweden, you’re talking about a country about the size of California with the population of L.A. County. There’s a lot of room in them thar hills for serial killers and for dumping bodies. And I loved the idea of really, truly getting winter across in an investigation.”
For Fincher, it doesn’t matter how dark a project’s subject matter is, or its preferred audience, but rather what speaks to him in its story. “There are different things about stories that resonate with you based on movies you love and the kind of movies that you made,” he explained. “So I don’t know how I choose things to be involved with, but you get a hankering where you go, ‘I’d like to see this, and I’d like to see it done this way.’” In that sense, if Fincher feels he’s able to conjure a compelling vision from a script, he’ll likewise feel compelled to make it. “I like the idea that you can kind of pick and choose where you’re going to spend your efforts — what you’re going to underline, and what you’re going to blur,” he added.
And what will Fincher make next? That’s up in the air, but he’s attached to an English-language adaptation of Netflix‘s wildly popular series “Squid Game.” He also has a miniseries prequel to “Chinatown” lined up at the streamer, which Fincher co-wrote with the original 1974 film’s screenwriter Robert Towne. Both of those are much better fits for Fincher than “Harry Potter” ever will be.
