September 21, 2026
Netflix
Brad Pitt returns as Cliff Booth, only this time it’s 1977 and it’s a very different Hollywood.
Directed by David Fincher from a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, THE FURTHER MIS-ADVENTURES OF CLIFF BOOTH comes to IMAX November 25.
For 29 years, everybody (including the man who directed it) has apologized for the ending of David Fincher’s The Game. They should stop. The ending is the only part of the movie that came true.
Janet Riley
September 15, 2026
InsidePulse
The Game is the most accurate movie about the 21st century that anyone has ever made, and it came out in September 1997.
That is too big a sentence, and I know it. The Truman Show predicted reality television. The Matrix predicted that we’d spend our lives inside a simulation and argue about it online. Wag the Dog predicted most of the news. But all of those movies predicted media, which is the easy part, because media was already the thing everyone was scared of in the 1990s. The Game predicted a customer. It predicted what it would feel like to be the person a company is built around: known completely, handled by strangers, driven around by nobody, and billed at the end. Nobody in 1997 believed that was possible, which is why nobody in 1997 believed the ending.
So let me put my opinion where you can see it. The Game is great. The ending is the best thing in it. And David Fincher, who has spent a decade apologizing for that ending, is wrong about his own movie. In 2014 he told Playboy, flatly, “We didn’t figure out the third act, and it was my fault.” With respect: he figured it out fine. The audience just hadn’t been built yet.
Brando Benetton
August 28, 2026
Soundstage Access
This week we welcome on the show Courtenay Miles, a WGA-nominated screenwriter and assistant director whose credits include Gone Girl, Mindhunter, and the upcoming The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, starring Brad Pitt.
In today’s conversation, Courtenay shares the remarkable story of her transition from assistant director to screenwriter, reflects on her years-long collaboration with David Fincher, and takes us inside the meticulous research and writing process behind Mindhunter.
Courtenay’s latest feature, Evil Genius, directed by Courteney Cox, will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this September.
Listen to the podcast on:
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Brad Pitt stars, returning as Cliff Booth, with a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino.
Kristin Iversen
August 27, 2026
Tudum by Netflix
Mark your calendars, because director David Fincher’s THE FURTHER MIS-ADVENTURES OF CLIFF BOOTH will be coming to IMAX theaters globally for an exclusive two-week run starting November 25, before debuting on Netflix on December 23.
Brad Pitt returns to his Academy Award-winning role as Cliff Booth, only this time it’s 1977 and it’s a very different Hollywood. Directed by David Fincher from a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, THE FURTHER MIS-ADVENTURES OF CLIFF BOOTH also stars Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Peter Weller, Matt Groove, JB Tadena, Corey Fogelmanis, and Karren Karagulian, and will be produced by Pitt and Ceán Chaffin.
In addition to Pitt and Chaffin, the film’s creative team includes Fincher’s longtime collaborators, like Erik Messerschmidt, ASC, as director of photography, and Donald Graham Burt as production designer. It’s edited by Kirk Baxter, ACE, with casting by Laray Mayfield. Trish Summerville is costume designer, Ren Klyce is sound designer, and Dave Macomber is stunt coordinator.
Come back to Tudum for more information on THE FURTHER MIS-ADVENTURES OF CLIFF BOOTH before it comes to screens later this year.
Title Announcement
Kenny McMillan
July 2, 2026
Frame & Reference
Frame & Reference is a conversation between Cinematographers hosted by Kenny McMillan. Each episode dives into the respective DP’s current and past work, as well as what influences and inspires them. These discussions are an entertaining and informative look into the world of making films through the lens of the people who shoot them.
This week, we have the absolutely wonderful Pete Konczal, ASC, on the program to talk about his work on Black Rabbit, House of Cards, and more!
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Jennifer Maas
June 30, 2026
Variety
David Fincher, Weapons filmmaker Zach Cregger and Night School Studio want you to die while playing the new Netflix horror video game, Unhinged.
“At least once,” according to Sean Krankel, general manager of narrative games at Netflix and studio director at Night School.
In Unhinged, players take on the role of Ava (voiced by Zoë Kravitz), a woman who wakes up during an intense storm that has knocked out her power. The game, which can be played on Netflix via subscribers’ TVs or computers, has you use your real-life phone as your controller, which acts as your flashlight and way to call and text your best friend Claire (Sadie Sink) and building super Ben (Troy Baker), while also being the way you move around and make choices. And those choices become increasingly important as you discover a killer is afoot and coming for you and the other remaining building residents.
Developed by the Netflix-owned Night School Studio in secret collaboration with David Fincher and Zach Cregger (the two directors got a “Special Thanks” acknowledgment in the game’s credits when it was released Tuesday, but Netflix has not commented on their inclusion in the process beyond confirming their creative involvement to Variety), Unhinged is a survival game that includes “about 10 times” the player could die throughout the story, which will take you roughly more than 30 minutes to play.
Netflix’s Horror Game ‘Unhinged’ Is Funny, Scary and Points to a Future Without Second Screens
William Earl
June 30, 2026
Variety
Cynthia Littleton
July 2, 2026
Variety
Netflix Games Dials Up The Dread For ‘Unhinged’ Starring Zoë Kravitz, Sadie Sink & Troy Baker
Destiny Jackson
June 30, 2026
Deadline
Survive the Night in Unhinged — Everything You Need to Know
Timothy J. Seppala
June 30, 2026
Netflix Tudum
Unhinged. Official Game Trailer
June 23, 2026
Netflix Games and Netflix
Zoë Kravitz (The Batman, Kimi, Caught Stealing) as Ava
Sadie Sink (Stranger Things, the Utopia series project) as Claire, Ava’s best friend
Troy Baker (The Last of Us, Love, Death + Robots: Bad Travelling) as the apartment-building super, Ben
Jason Hill (Mindhunter, Love, Death + Robots: Bad Travelling): Music
Ren Klyce (Every Work by Fincher): Sound Design
June 29, 2026
StudioBinder (YouTube)
Most thrillers guide you with close-ups. David Fincher‘s approach to The Game (1997) goes the other direction — wide frames, a neutral camera grammar, nothing that triggers your editorial radar. In a film built entirely on manipulation, the film analysis only works if you never feel it happening.
Chapters:
00:00: How Fincher Controls Your Mind in The Game
01:19: The Game Recap
02:04: How Fincher’s Team Approached The Game
04:53: Leading Lines
06:35: Overhead Lighting
08:05: Emotional Manipulation
13:12: Takeaways
This is a cinematography breakdown of how Fincher and his collaborators — production designer Jeffrey Beecroft and cinematographer Harris Savides — built a visual system where every layer does covert work. Leading lines run through every corridor. Lighting spotlights without editorializing. An architecture of compressed versus open space communicates Van Orton‘s psychological state before a word of dialogue confirms it. From the fluorescent corridors of CRS to the hotel room ceiling pressing down, the production design in this film is doing David Fincher’s directing work silently.
What makes The Game remarkable is that Fincher runs the same operation on the audience that CRS runs on Van Orton. The wide frame withholds. The set design steers. The lighting points — without ever announcing itself as an editorial decision. None of it triggers your pattern-recognition the way a close-up would. You navigate the film exactly as Van Orton navigates the game. Once you see the system, you can’t unsee it.
If you’re drawn to production design, visual storytelling in film, or how directors control the audience without anyone realizing it — this breakdown is for you. Watch it, then try rewatching The Game.
♬ Songs used:
“Happy Birthday, Nicholas” – Howard Shore
“Consumer Recreation Services” – Howard Shore
“Harlequin Clown” – Howard Shore
“Congratulations on Choosing C.R.S.” – Howard Shore
“House of Pain” – Howard Shore
“Van Orton Mansion” – Howard Shore
“White Rabbit” – Jefferson Airplane
“Room 277” – Howard Shore
“Strange Connection” – Nobou
“Attempted Murder” – Howard Shore
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Directed by David Fincher • 1997 • United States
Starring Michael Douglas, Sean Penn, Deborah Kara Unger
The enormously wealthy and emotionally remote investment banker Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) receives a strange gift from his ne’er-do-well younger brother (Sean Penn) on his forty-eighth birthday: a voucher for a game that, if he agrees to play it, will change his life. Thus begins a trip down the rabbit hole that is puzzling, terrifying, and exhilarating for Nicholas and viewers alike. This multilayered, noirish descent into one man’s personal hell is also a surreal, metacinematic journey that, two years after the phenomenon SE7EN, further demonstrated that director David Fincher was one of Hollywood’s true contemporary visionaries.
Watch our edition of The Game (1997), David Fincher’s multilayered, noirish descent into one man’s personal hell.
Marshall Shaffer
May 21, 2025
Crooked Marquee
“Can SONY market a ONE MAN SHOW (?)” wrote David Fincher in an email uncovered by the 2014 Sony hack, regarding his excitement about Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs script. “Can you guys make the LENNY of it all, the MUST SEE?” This reference to Bob Fosse’s 1974 film Lenny (whose restoration receives a spiffy 4K disc from the Criterion Collection this month) proves a revelatory window into Fincher’s mind.
The late multihyphenate has seen his legacy on the upswing even beyond the Criterion canonization. This reappreciation has recognized Fosse’s work, such as IndieWire naming his All That Jazz the best film of the 1970s last year. And it’s also shone a spotlight on the man, most notably through FX’s acclaimed miniseries about his up-and-down relationship with life and creative partner Gwen Verdon in Fosse/Verdon.
But Fincher’s been a consistent, continuous admirer in ways that are not always recognized. “I’m a big Fosse guy,” Fincher told a Film Independent event in 2014. “I don’t think the guy made a bad movie.” He backs that admiration up in his own work, most notably an extended homage to All That Jazz in his music video for Paula Abdul’s Cold Hearted.
Yet the ties run deeper than surface-level homage. As a teenager working in a movie theater projection booth, Fincher claims to have seen All That Jazz 175 times. Fosse is the only director who has multiple films in Fincher’s list of all-time favorites. And, it should be noted, Fincher was among the long list of directors approached to tackle bringing Fosse’s Chicago to the big screen during its long development process in the 1990s.
The kinship between Fosse and Fincher is as much a spiritual one as an overtly stylistic connection. Both men arrived in Hollywood through side doors, honing their craft through other media and disciplines that would form their distinctly calibrated sense of spectacle and rhythm alike. Fosse was a creature of the stage who excelled as an actor, choreographer, and director in the heyday of the American musical. Fincher, on the other hand, began his career in visual effects before cutting his teeth on the nascent form of music videos (as well as some slick commercials).
Having to break down movement into its discrete components forged a relentless perfectionism in both men. This exact and exacting compulsion recurs in everything from the craftsmanship to their characters. “He’s ruthless with his characters,” Fincher observed of Fosse in terms that could just as easily apply to the pitiless precision of his own filmography. “They’re amazing, and they’re watchable, and they’re disgusting.”
The film stars Brad Pitt, returning as Cliff Booth, with a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino.
Kristin Iversen
May 20, 2026
Tudum by Netflix
Mark your calendars, because director David Fincher’s latest film will be coming to IMAX theaters globally for an exclusive two-week run starting November 25, before debuting on Netflix on December 23.
Brad Pitt returns to his Academy Award-winning role as Cliff Booth, only this time it’s 1977 and it’s a very different Hollywood. Directed by David Fincher from a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, the film also stars Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Peter Weller, Matt Groove, JB Tadena, Corey Fogelmanis, and Karren Karagulian, and will be produced by Pitt and Ceán Chaffin.
In addition to Pitt and Chaffin, the film’s creative team includes Fincher’s longtime collaborators, like Erik Messerschmidt, ASC, as director of photography, and Donald Graham Burt as production designer. It’s edited by Kirk Baxter, ACE, with casting by Laray Mayfield. Trish Summerville is costume designer, Ren Klyce is sound designer, and Dave Macomber is stunt coordinator.
Come back to Tudum for more information on the movie before it comes to screens later this year.
The Fincher Analyst 