David Fincher Movies We'll Never Get To See

Given how provocative so many of his movies are, it's a wonder director David Fincher has ever gotten anything made at a major studio. In bringing titles like "Se7en," "Fight Club," and "Gone Girl" to life, Fincher has inspired a fair amount of criticism but also an even greater heaping of praise for the bold choices his movies make. Fincher's works don't just deliver twists — they deliver moments that force you to grip your seat, grit your teeth, and gird your soul. They don't just leave you thinking, they leave you reexamining the entire world around you. Not every Fincher movie may be your cup of tea. But each of his features, particularly all-time classics like "Zodiac" and "The Social Network," are bound to leave some kind of impression on your psyche.

Fincher's creative tendencies are so bold that even his unmade movies tickle the imagination. Over the years, Fincher has been attached to a slew of projects that never got off the ground for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the budget wasn't right, or perhaps movie studio politics got in the way of Fincher's ambitions. Whatever the reasons, the David Fincher movies we'll never see still entrance the mind with the possibilities of what the filmmaker could've delivered if fate had been on his side.

After directing several striking movies in the 1990s, it appeared, at the dawn of the 21st century, that David Fincher was about to hit the big time. Word broke in 2002 that the director would be graduating to blockbuster filmmaking by taking on "Mission: Impossible III." Apparently, star Tom Cruise was integral in getting Fincher the job, and the production was aiming for a summer 2004 debut. At the time of signing on, Fincher was optimistic about delivering something memorable. "You can never make exactly the movie you want to make," he told The Guardian. "But if [Paramount] let us do even half of what we want, it should make for a pretty interesting film.

However, Fincher would soon leave the project, with Joe Carnahan signing on before eventual final director J.J. Abrams succeeded him as the man behind "Mission: Impossible III." In 2008, Fincher reflected on why exactly he departed the big-budget production. "I think the problem with third movies is the people who are financing them are experts on how they should be made and what they should be," Fincher explained to MTV. "At that point, when you own a franchise like that, you want to get rid of any extraneous opinions. I'm not the kind of person who says, 'Let's see the last two, I see what you're going for.' You'll never hear me say, 'Whatever is easiest for you.'" Because of these disagreements, when it came time to choose to accept directorial duties on "Mission: Impossible III," Fincher simply walked away.

When you think David Fincher, you might not automatically think of the kind of movies that Disney produces. But Fincher and the Mouse House almost joined forces for a new take on "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." A modern adaptation of the story that inspired Disney's 1954 live-action movie, the film apparently would've been decidedly from the mind behind "Fight Club." Disney's president of production, Sean Bailey, said in 2010 (via MTV) that, "It's a bold, you know, Fincher-esque take. It's a bold, aggressive. ... It's got some of the characters from the original. It's got Land, it's got Aronnax. It's got Nemo, of course. But it's kind of a bold way in."

Three years later, though, Fincher's "Leagues" sank to the bottom of the ocean, as word came out that the project was officially docked. A year after that, Fincher got open about the fights that led to the film's demise, including his desire for Channing Tatum to headline the feature while Disney wanted Chris Hemsworth in the lead. "You get over $200 million — all motion picture companies have corporate culture and corporate anxieties," Fincher explained (via IndieWire). "Once we got past the list of people we could cast as the different characters in the film, once we got past one or two names which made them very comfortable, making a movie at that price, it became this bizarre endeavor to find which three names you could rub together to make platinum."

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is not a one-and-done book nor was its Swedish film adaptation. Both properties were followed up by a pair of sequels — "The Girl Who Played with Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest." And the thought of doing more Lisbeth Salander adventures with David Fincher's take on "Dragon Tattoo" had clearly crossed the filmmaker's mind.

In December 2011, as his "Tattoo" film was about to be released, Fincher detailed plans to shoot adaptations of the two sequels back-to-back. "The second two books are very much one story," Fincher explained (via Collider). And it doesn't seem prudent to me to go to Sweden for a year. Come back for a year. Put out the second one. Go to Sweden for a year. Come back for a year. ... So I think that would be crazy especially given the sense that it's really one story that's kind of bifurcated in the middle." 

However, by August 2012, initial plans to have Fincher's "Girl Who Played with Fire" out in theaters in 2013 were scuttled despite a draft of the script being written by Steven Zaillian ("Schindler's List," "The Irishman," and Fincher's "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"). Though there were initial hopes of getting the production off the ground at a later date, these sequels were never meant to be. The project fizzled out after that, with Sony Pictures eventually electing to go the reboot route by doing a new Fincher-less version of Salander with 2018's "The Girl in the Spider's Web."

While most film fans know about 2005's "Lords of Dogtown," more obscure is the fact that David Fincher was once going to helm the production. When the film's original director, Fred Durst, bounced off the project, Fincher was hired to replace him. Fincher's version of the motion picture actually got quite far along in production. However, Fincher would eventually depart the film, and Catherine Hardwicke ended up being the one who directed the cut of "Lords of Dogtown" that graced theater screens.

So, what happened? According to a Seattle Times interview with Hardwicke, Fincher and "Dogtown" distributor Sony Pictures clashed over the cost and underlying ideas in the film. This led to disagreements that couldn't be resolved and inspired Fincher to abandon "Dogtown." And according to a Paste review of the film's final cut, one of Fincher's ideas that led to his parting was his desire to use real skateboarders in the movie rather than actors. That would've been an extremely bold move fitting of an ambitious filmmaker like Fincher, but it apparently wasn't the road Sony wanted to go down.

David Fincher's 2014 movie "Gone Girl" proved to be not just a critical success, it also turned out to be a moneymaker at the worldwide box office. This colossal hit was thanks to a fantastic collaboration between Fincher, star Ben Affleck, and screenwriter Gillian Flynn. Everyone worked so well together on the thriller that it's understandable why this trio would be looking around for further projects to team up on.

Just a few months after "Gone Girl" hit theaters, news broke that this group would be reuniting for a remake of the Alfred Hitchcock 1951 film "Strangers on a Train." In the original movie, a tennis player (Farley Granger) meets a wealthy sociopath (Robert Walker) aboard a train, and after what's supposedly a light-hearted conversation, the psycho thinks they've made a deal to swap murders — the tennis player's wife for the bad guy's dad.

This version of the story, though, would be called "Strangers," would be set in the modern times, and focus on Affleck playing a famous movie star rather than a tennis pro. Upon the film's announcement, it was noted that it was hurling towards production at great speed. Despite that initial momentum, not to mention the enticing combination of the Fincher-Affleck-Flynn trio and a famous Hitchcock film, the production never materialized. Just a few months after it was announced, Flynn noted that "Strangers" was unlikely to happen in the near future due to the busy schedules of all involved parties. Her prediction ended up being dead-on, as "Strangers" has never managed to become a reality.