David Fincher will never direct a comedy movie: “I have a lot of trouble with material”
When you think of David Fincher, the first thing that comes to mind is probably serial killers or maybe Fight Club, with the point being, some directors are known for their ability to run the gamut of genres, while others have entrenched themselves so deeply in one style that it becomes completely synonymous with them, and Fincher is undoubtedly of the latter.
If The Silence of the Lambs introduced audiences to the serial killer, Fincher got them hooked with his 1995 crime thriller Seven, used 2007’s Zodiac to make the definitive movie on the most terrifying and enigmatic serial killer in history, and closed the entire loop with Mindhunter, the acclaimed Netflix series that focused entirely on the FBI’s coining of the term.
So, of course, he’s become somewhat pigeonholed as the filmmaker for serial killer films, by his own admission to Playboy, “I know that if a script has a serial killer, or any kind of killer, I have to be sent it. I don’t have any choice”.
While it must be annoying for any director to feel like they’ve been typecast, Fincher doesn’t seem to mind as long as the material is good, but what he does find tricky is the other kind of projects that get brought his way: “I have a problem with material”.
It’s not like Fincher hasn’t ventured outside the thriller genre; OK, so Fight Club could be considered a thriller, but there’s so much more to it than that, then there’s the two very different biopics, The Social Network and Mank, and the romantic fantasy The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. However, as you can see with the latter two, these haven’t always been his strongest.
While the director definitely favours the dark and dangerous, he’s clearly open to more, but there’s a few things on his no-go list, with the first a straightforward, star-studded romance, about which he has said, “I have issues with movies where two people fall in love just because they’re the stars and their names are above the title”. The second is, unshockingly, the superhero film, although this is less to do with sensibility and more to do with the fact that “so many other people are doing that”.
Then there’s one thing he downright refuses, which is comedy, explaining, “I don’t like characters who try to win me over. I don’t like being ingratiated. I don’t like obsequiousness”.
As is clear from his filmography, Fincher is more attracted to exposing the underbelly of the human condition than obscuring it with laughs; laughter may be the best tonic, but Fincher wants you disturbed.
Notwithstanding, he is about to direct a comedy, of sorts, as 2026 will see Fincher pairing up with his muse, Brad Pitt, once again in the spin-off of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, which is Netflix’s The Adventures of Cliff Booth that will see Pitt reprising his role from the former, and if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s Tarantino’s humour.
Yes, Fincher and Tarantino’s films might both be splattered in blood and depict the worst sides of humanity, but the latter’s are definitely a little lighter in tone. In saying that, it’s not as though Cliff Booth will be an up-and-down comedy, yet there’s something intriguing about Fincher bringing his particular point of view to this genre.
