The only time Tom Hanks replaced David Fincher as a director: “He was leaving us in the lurch
David Fincher has picked up and dropped many potential directorial jobs, but if you were to make a list of the people best qualified or most well-suited to replace him, Tom Hanks wouldn’t figure, apart from the time when that’s exactly what happened.
Some of Fincher’s what-ifs over the years include that World War Z sequel with Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible III, Wesley Snipes’ Blade, Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, Angelina Jolie’s Cleopatra, Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and one of the Star Wars sequels.
Can you envision him making any of those? Of course you can, that’s why he was considering it. On the other hand, could you see Hanks taking the reins of any of those projects? If the answer is yes, then you’ve got a hell of an imagination, because absolutely none of them are within a thousand miles of his wheelhouse.
So far, Hanks has helmed That Thing You Do!, which was born from his obsession with The Beatles, and Larry Crowne, a forgettable rom-com. The two-time Academy Award winner has a more eclectic CV on the small screen, having directed an episode of Tales from the Crypt, the short-lived A League of Their Own TV series that was canned after five episodes, and a solitary instalment of Band of Brothers.
However, it’s on television that the Fincher connection comes in. One of the more ambitious shows of its day, the two-season anthology, Fallen Angels, roped in a murderers’ row of behind-the-camera talent to tell one-shot stories, which included Cruise making his first and last foray into directing.
Peter Bogdanovich, Alfonso Cuarón, Steven Soderbergh, Kiefer Sutherland, and Agnieszka Holland were among the other contributors, and Fincher almost was. He was supposed to helm the first season’s second episode, ‘I’ll Be Waiting’, based on Raymond Chandler’s 1939 short story of the same name.
He was looking to bounce back after his disastrous feature-length debut on Alien 3, and a hard-boiled crime story seemed like the ideal opportunity to do it. In a curious twist of fate, Fincher was forced to drop out when another hard-boiled crime story, Seven, became his priority, leaving Fallen Angels in search of a new director for an episode scheduled to premiere in August 1993.
“I think Fincher’s agent felt bad because he knew he was leaving us in the lurch ten days before shooting or something,” creator William Horberg remembered, but at least there was a backup plan. “He knew that Tom wanted to direct something, and he asked him whether he’d want to be a part of this. So it went from [Michael] Mann to Fincher to Hanks.”
Fincher replacing Mann makes at least some degree of sense, but Hanks replacing Fincher does not. And yet, he stepped in to steer ‘I’ll Be Waiting’ onto the airwaves, and unless something drastic or remarkable happens, it’ll be the only time the two-time Oscar-winning actor picks up the directorial baton from the brains behind Gone Girl, Mank, and The Game.
