Bloomberg yesterday released the news of the non-renewal of the contract, due to 2027, between David Fincher and Netflix, triggering a flurry of speculation. Of all the directors who have collaborated with the streaming giant, the filmmaker, renowned for his perfectionism, is the one who has stayed with them the longest, but evidently something has changed. In 2013, in fact, Fincher served as executive producer (and directed several episodes) of the series House of Cards, for which he also won an Emmy, before signing an agreement with Netflix for his upcoming projects.
The Story of David Fincher’s Relationship with Netflix
The first film Fincher made for Netflix under the deal was The Gone Girl, in 2014, followed in 2016 by the stunning TV series Mindhunter, which has a large following among fans, but which was abruptly canceled after only two seasons (the true reasons, with blame-shifting between the director and network executives, have never been disclosed). In 2019 Fincher is credited as executive producer for Tim Miller’s animated series Love, Death & Robots (in which he also directed an episode), and he returns to cinema with the biographical Mank, a beautiful homage to old Hollywood about the screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, portrayed by Gary Oldman, a film that had a limited theatrical release before moving to streaming. Mank earned ten Oscar nominations, winning for cinematography and production design. In 2021 Fincher directed The Killer, with Michael Fassbender, based on a French graphic novel. In 2024, when Fincher and Netflix were still on excellent terms, at least as the director stated in interviews, he was supposed to work on the American version of the Korean series Squid Game (recently canceled by Netflix) as well as a prequel miniseries to the film Chinatown, written with the original author, Robert Towne, before his death. And now we are awaiting November 26 for the release of The New Misadventures of Cliff Booth, written by Quentin Tarantino and devoted to the character played by Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. The reported budget for the latter sits around $200 million, a figure that apparently displeased Netflix executives. But we do not know exactly the reasons for this split or what it will mean for Fincher’s future: will another studio or platform try to lure him away? Despite his successes and his status as a cult director, David Fincher is notoriously very expensive, and not everyone can afford him. In fact, as in the article you can read below, Netflix has decided to distance itself more and more from auteurs to follow the commercial logic of the algorithm.
Comments