From Fight Club to Zodiac, Gone Girl to The Killer, having the name "David Fincher" attached to a project makes it seemingly guaranteed for success, but the filmmaker claims that hasn't always been the case.
Fincher's acclaimed-but-cancelled Netflix series Mindhunter, on which he acted as a director and executive producer, is a notable example, with fans hoping for a Season 3 of the psychological crime thriller being disappointed to learn that Fincher was putting the series on hold while he pursued other projects, like the Herman J. Mankiewicz biopic Mank.
That indefinite "hold" ended up being permanent cancellation, with the streamer citing the show's high budget. Netflix gave Fincher a proposition: either reduce costs or "make it more pop," i.e. broaden the show's audience appeal. He refused, a move that he recently told France's Première Magazine stemmed from a reaction he once received to that famously shocking ending (no spoilers here!) of his classic 1995 thriller, Se7en. Per an English translation courtesy X user @FincherAnalyst, Fincher said:
