Cinephiles rejoice; David Fincher is about to be a free man once again. Through the ‘90s and into the 2010s, David Fincher went on a genuinely generational run of films, from Se7en to The Game to Fight Club to Panic Room to Zodiac to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to The Social Network to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to Gone Girl. The director cemented himself as one of the best in the business, a visual artist with an exacting eye and a meticulous style that yielded consistently compelling and often transcendent results onscreen. But in the early 2010s, as streaming platforms were just beginning to become a reality and attempt to gain a foothold with audiences, something happened to Fincher; he was enticed by the possibilities Netflix offered.
Fincher signed on to Netflix and became their unofficial de facto creative lead in a lot of ways, creating House of Cards for the streamer in 2013, which became the platform’s first breakthrough success. More than that, Fincher’s visual style became something that was oft-emulated by other Netflix productions, especially his go-to lighting techniques. But where Fincher utilized these techniques to craft frames with depth, clarity, and precision, the emulations were far less well-sculpted and resulted in the kind of murky visual quality that has since come to define so much of the junky content the streamer hawks.
Ever since the release of Gone Girl in 2014, Fincher has been exclusively a Netflix player, having made numerous television shows (House of Cards, Mindhunter, Love Death + Robots, and Voir) and two feature films (Mank and The Killer) with a third on the way in the form of The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth. But now, it has been revealed that the upcoming Brad Pitt-starring film is actually the final obligation in his contract and will effectively end his deal with the streamer, allowing him to take his talents elsewhere.
This is undeniably great news. It is difficult to overstate what a massive fan I am of David Fincher’s, and the fact that it has now been over a decade since a Fincher film got a wide release in theaters should be a chargeable offense. He has done some great stuff during his Netflix tenure (the first season of Mindhunter is probably among the best seasons of television this century, The Killer is the funniest film he’s ever made) but the opportunity for him to break free from these streaming trappings and make stuff on for the big screen once again is one I can’t wait to see him seize.
Fincher used to be one of the defining names of the cinematic experience, right alongside the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan, and I’m very eager to see him showcase precisely why that was with whatever project he tackles next for real theatrical distribution.
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