We’re tantalizingly close to the release of David Fincher‘s upcoming film, the adaptation of best-selling novel "Gone Girl," and the closer we get, the more unbearable the wait. Word has started to leak out from those who’ve seen it, some calling it one of the director’s very best, and every clip or trailer makes it look more and more fascinating.
Fans of the book were a little puzzled at the start of the year when reports suggested that the film might have a different ending to the original (author and screenwriter Gillian Flynn told Entertainment Weekly "Ben [Affleck] was so shocked by it. He would say, "This is a whole new third act! She literally threw that third act out and started from scratch"), but now it seems like the case might have been overstated a little: New York Times writer Cara Turner interviewed Affleck for the paper and thus has seen the film, and reveals that "contrary to early speculation, the film hews closely to the book."
Of course, this is fairly subjective, but it sounds like the radical rethink that fans were afraid of (or, in our case, hoping for: the book’s ending is the weakest element) is apparently not in place. In the profile, Affleck says that "Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice," which he’s presently shooting is "really unique to the genre and really smart," and confirms that the biopic of notorious Boston mobster Whitey Bulger he was planning with Matt Damon is defunct after Johnny Depp‘s rival project "Black Mass" got the greenlight first.
Elsewhere, "Gone Girl" is on the cover the new issue of Empire, and in the accompanying profile, Fincher reveals a surprising detail about the tone of the film. Flynn tells the magazine that "one thing we clicked on immediately was we wanted to keep the dark humor," and Fincher himself compares the film’s vibe to 1977’s National Lampoon album "That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick," a button-pushing sketch record that featured Bill Murray and Christopher Guest (listen to an cut below), saying, "I want it to work and live in the area of slightly tongue-in-cheek, but also morally repellent." It’s a very good piece, so we recommend it.
Finally, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, reteaming with Fincher for the third time after their Oscar-winning "The Social Network" and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" scores, sat down with the Wall Street Journal to discuss the music for the project, and Reznor reveals that it has some unlikely inspirations. "[Fincher] said ‘Think about the really terrible music you hear in massage parlors," the Nine Inch Nails mastermind tells the paper. "The way that it artificially tries to make you feel like everything’s OK. And then imagine that sound startling to curdle and unravel."
Ross adds that the film’s main motif "travels the journey of the story, mutating within itself from something that feels warm and loving to something that feels so sick. But we close on the same music we open on." "Gone Girl" opens the New York Film Festival on September 26th, before going on wide release on October 3rd.