10 incredible unrealised projects by David Fincher
Like most filmmakers, David Fincher has flirted with many projects he didn’t end up making, a number that goes beyond those he managed to steer through production and over the finish line. That said, imagining how the three-time Academy Award nominee for ‘Best Director’ would approach various rumoured topics remains endlessly intriguing.
Having made his feature-length debut on the troubled Alien 3, it’s not much of a shock that several of his unrealised efforts are blockbuster franchise films. It’s an arena Fincher has yet to return to 30 years on, and the experience has potentially soured him on taking on established intellectual property for good.
The most recent was his plans to helm Brad Pitt’s World War Z sequel, which has slipped back into development hell. The first movie may have suffered a cursed production, but it was remarkably solid in spite of its on-set woes and ended up as the highest-grossing zombie flick ever made. Fincher and Pitt have struck gold together before, and an effects-heavy apocalypse would have been a sight to see.
Similarly, Fincher dropped out of Mission: Impossible III due to creative differences, perhaps driven by his desire to take the series in a “more violent” direction, which came after he’d ruled himself out of the running for what would eventually become Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. Sony wanted an origin story, something he blasted as “dumb,” before those discussions came to an end.
That wasn’t even the first time Fincher had circled a comic book adaptation, either, after David S. Goyer revealed to MovieWeb that the duo had been developing Blade. Continuing his eversion to household properties, the Fight Club and Panic Room director also confirmed to Empire that he’d been offered the chance to helm the ninth mainline entry in the Star Wars saga but couldn’t “imagine the kind of intestinal fortitude one has to have following up the success of these last two”.
Recent Netflix release The Killer may have come bearing an identical title to a classic John Woo action movie despite being completely unconnected, but Fincher already had experience in that arena when he was circling Frank Miller’s three-issue comic book run Hard Boiled, where Nicolas Cage would have no doubt mesmerised as an insurance investigator who finds out he’s actually a murderous cybernetic tax collector.
A remake of the historical epic Cleopatra – which is still trying to claw its way out of development torture – was on the cards with Angelina Jolie eyed for the title role back in 2011, before Fincher almost got into bed with Disney to re-do 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, ultimately departing when corporate machinations convinced him that it wasn’t the best use of his time.
Meanwhile, Arthur C. Clarke’s seminal sci-fi Rendezvous with Rama – currently being prepped for a post-Dune Denis Villeneuve – was on the agenda as far back as 2001, too, with Morgan Freeman on board to star and produce, and it was a project he viewed as a viable possibility for close to a decade.
Netflix’s animated anthology Love, Death & Robots was also born as a direct result of Fincher’s repeated attempts to reinvent animated cult classic Heavy Metal, where he was planning to direct one of the many segments alongside notable peers including James Cameron, Zack Snyder, and Guillermo del Toro among others, with Jack Black’s Tenacious D having reportedly already penned a song for the soundtrack.
Fincher may be 12 movies deep into his career as a director with plenty more to come, but the ones he didn’t make offer a tantalising snapshot into a Hollywood history that could have been.
10 unrealised David Fincher projects:
- World War Z 2
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
- Heavy Metal
- Mission: Impossible III
- Spider-Man
- Hard Boiled
- Blade
- Rendezvous with Rama
- Cleopatra
- Star Wars: Episode IX
