The role Brad Pitt turned down for being “too nihilistic”
Even though their personal and professional bond is a strong one that’s lasted decades and been responsible for cinematic excellence on all three counts, Brad Pitt isn’t going to bend over backwards to be in a David Fincher movie just for the sake of it.
The two have been friends since the early 1990s when Pitt was first cast in Fincher’s sophomore feature Seven, which he counts as his genuine debut after instantly distancing himself from Alien 3. The end result was one of the best Hollywood thrillers of the decade, and a powerhouse partnership was born.
They’d reunite several years later for Fight Club, which became one of the defining films of its era. The withering takedown of materialism and masculinity may not have been warmly embraced by everyone upon its initial release, and Fincher is bemused that so many people continue to take away the wrong message, but there’s no point in anyone even trying to deny it’s a modern classic.
For their third – and so far final – collaboration, the heavyweight duo ventured into the realm of prestige drama with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which won three Academy Awards and earned a further ten nominations, including ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Actor’.
They’ve remained outside of each other’s orbit since then, but it hasn’t been for a lack of trying. Pitt dropped out of Fincher’s proposed blockbuster bow in the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea remake, while there were multiple attempts to get them back together for the sequel to zombie epic World War Z, which eventually amounted to nothing.
A fourth picture together has been a long time coming, but it could have happened right after Benjamin Button had Pitt been able to overcome his indifference to nihilism. Of course, Fight Club carries that spirit in every fibre of its being, which might have dissuaded him from taking the plunge on the first version of The Killer.
“I’d originally been thinking of Brad back in 2008,” Fincher admitted to Rolling Stone. “But his response had been, ‘Eh, a little too nihilistic for me’. OK, so, who? We needed someone who would embrace that aspect of the character.”
Fincher was first announced to be directing The Killer in November 2007, with Allesandro Camon penning the screenplay for the graphic novel adaptation revolving around a methodical hitman struggling with a crisis of confidence. By the time cameras finally started rolling, it was November 2021 with old cohort Andrew Kevin Walker on scripting duties, and Michael Fassbender was playing the lead.
Fassbender is excellent in the title role as the enigmatic and existentially struggling hired gun, but it’s easy to see why Fincher originally envisioned Pitt for the part. The cold, calculating, and yet undeniably charismatic central figure would be a solid match for the more introspective side of the actor’s performative arsenal, only for the overriding theme of nihilism to be a deal-breaker.
