David Fincher might make expensive movies for major studios, but he doesn’t do blockbusters. The Game, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo may have cost upwards of $70 million apiece, but they were never designed as mass-marketed crowd-pleasers.
The filmmaker has come very close to taking the reins of a big budget IP-driven project on several occasions in the past, though, but he ultimately dropped out of Mission: Impossible III, Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a Cleopatra remake with Angelina Jolie in the lead role and the sequel to World War Z, while he was also contacted about Spider-Man two decades ago, before Sam Raimi landed the job.
We’re now hearing from our sources – the same ones who told us Ben Affleck was returning as Batman in The Flash long before it was confirmed – that Warner Bros. and DC Films reportedly approached the three-time Academy Award nominated director about a standalone comic book adaptation in a similar vein to Joker.
While further details remain unclear, chances are that Fincher knocked back the offer seeing as he signed an exclusive four-year development deal with Netflix last year in the wake of his biopic Mank, and he’s currently gearing up to shoot a live-action take on graphic novel The Killer with Michael Fassbender taking top billing. Of course, there’s every chance WB could circle back around when he’s no longer under contract with the streamer, but that’s a while away yet.
