From A-Z: A Guide To The Lost & Unmade Films Of David Fincher

In advance of “Gone Girl” opening on Friday, Fincher Week continues here at the Playlist, and we’re moving forward on a subject that’s rather less heavy on Paula Abdul than yesterday’s guide to David Fincher’s music videos. It’s difficult to get any movie made, and as a result, every filmmaker has their ones-that-got-away, a brace of projects that got lost down the back of the proverbial settee for one reason or another: indeed, the smartest filmmakers are the ones who develop multiple projects and proceed with whichever’s moving forward fastest.

READ MORE: Ranked The Films Of David Fincher

But Fincher seems to have more “what-ifs” than most. In a features career of nearly twenty five years, Fincher’s only made ten movies, including some significant gaps (five years passed between the release of “Panic Room” and “Zodiac,” for example). And part of that time has been spent developing projects that never saw the light of day (or that saw the light of day with different filmmakers, or that might still be on the way).

READ MORE: Best To Worst: David Fincher’s Complete Music Videography Ranked 

Indeed, there are so many such projects that to help you guide your way through Fincher’s what-ifs, we’ve compiled an A-Z list of all the maybes, wish-they-hads, and still-mights of the directors’ career so far. Take a look below, let us know which one you most hope he returns to, and you can check out “Gone Girl” in theaters starting Friday.

A is for: “Automatic Detective”
Fincher teamed up with VFX company Blur Animation Studios back in 2008 to option the rights for this relatively little known sci-fi novel by A. Lee Martinez. Set in a ’50s-ish retro future, it focuses on killer robot-turned cabbie Mack Megaton, who gets caught in a film noirish mystery. Intended to be an animated feature, little’s been heard of the project since.

B is for: “The Black Dahlia”
Eventually filmed (badly) by Brian DePalma, back in the early 2000s, Fincher was attached to James Ellroy‘s crime classic “The Black Dahlia,” about two cops investigating one of L.A’s most famous and gruesome unsolved murders. Somewhat ahead of his time, Fincher originally wanted to make the movie as a sort of proto-“True Detective,” a five-hour $80 million miniseries featuring movie stars. This seemed to get streamlined into a feature at some point, with Mark Wahlberg attached in the lead role, but when he chose instead to do “The Italian Job,” the project lost momentum. Fincher and Ellroy stayed friends, with the latter contributing a commentary to “Zodiac,” and the two have another project in the works, as we’ll see in a moment.

C is for: “Chemical Pink,” “Chicago,” “Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind” and “Cleopatra”
After “Fight Club,” Fincher was briefly set to reteam with producer Art Linson and writer Chuck Palahniuk on “Chemical Pink,” a novel by author Katie Arnoldi which is set in the world of female bodybuilding (Palahniuk was to write the screenplay). Fincher departed swiftly, handing over the reins to “Spun” helmer Jonas Akerlund, but nothing ever came of it (“Adult World” director Scott Coffey came on last year). Fincher was also one of a number of directors (including Curtis Hanson and Bryan Singer) attached to Charlie Kaufman‘s script “Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind” before George Clooney took it on. And more recently, he was briefly involved in a new version of “Cleopatra” starring Angelina Jolie, before departing in favor of “Gone Girl.” Ang Lee replaced him on the project, but the film hasn’t moved forward.  At one point, there were rumors he was going to direct “Chicago” —it didn’t happen, but we hope he gets to a musical at some point (he loves the genre, and counts “All That Jazz” as one of his all-time favorites).

After the success of the 2001 documentary “Dogtown & Z-Boys,” about a legendary group of skaters in 1970s California, plans moved ahead for a feature film version, with Fincher producing, and, uh, Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst directing. Within a year, however, Durst departed, and Fincher replaced him in the director’s chair. That was only brief, however: within another year, the project was before cameras with “Thirteen” and “Twilight” helmer Catherine Hardwicke directing. It’s actually pretty good, with strong performances from Emile Hirsch, Victor Rasuk, John Robinson and especially Heath Ledger.

E is for: Eighties Music Videos & Ellroy
Like many serious filmmakers, Fincher’s increasingly looking at television as a place for real creative freedom, and he revealed in an interview a few months ago that he’s got a couple of new projects in the work for the small screen. We revealed exclusively a few weeks ago that Fincher was developing a new project for HBO with James Ellroy. Soon after, Fincher spilled some more beans, suggesting that he had two new shows in the works. One, the Ellroy project, is “‘Sunset Boulevard‘ set in the world of soap operas,” while the other sounds like his most autobiographical project, “about music videos in the 1980s and the crew members who worked on them.” Hell yes! Please!

F is for: “(The Sky is) Falling”
Even before “Seven” hit theaters in 1995, Fincher landed the coveted job directing this project, “The Sky Is Falling,” one of the biggest, and most notorious, spec script sales of the 1990s. Written by Howard Roth and Eric Singer, it revolved around two priests who discover firm proof that God doesn’t exist, and go on a drug-addled killing spree and are pursued by a dying hitman who doesn’t want the evidence to get out. As you might imagine, in a post-“Natural Born Killers“-climate, it wasn’t an easy greenlight, and even with the success of “Seven,” it couldn’t make it to production (Gore Verbinski also tried to get the project greenlit later on). Curiously, Fincher and Singer (who went on write “American Hustle“) are set to re-team on another project (see below).