Category: David Fincher

Killer Instincts

David Fincher aims to unsettle with Michael Fassbender as a ruthless assassin in gripping thriller The Killer.

By Nev Pierce
Photograph by Jean-Baptiste Mondino

November 1, 2023
Netflix Queue

The Killer is about an exacting professional whose meticulous methods and wry worldview are disrupted by unruly reality. This may be a clue as to why David Fincher wanted to make it. The Fight Club filmmaker is well-known for his tenacious approach to directing — always pushing for more. And in Michael Fassbender he has a leading man who is equally driven.

The Oscar-nominated star of 12 Years a Slave and Steve Jobs left screens for a few years to take up professional racing behind the wheel of a Porsche in the European Le Mans Series. This blend of danger and precision seems apt for playing the title character in The Killer, an unnamed assassin who aims to execute things — and people — perfectly.

We’ll get to how, or if, one can define “perfection” in cinema, but to an on-set observer, it might seem Fincher will settle for nothing less. While he would contest this, he knows his definitions can differ from others’. “My idea of professionalism is you work 24-7 to make good on your promises,” he says, before continuing with a self-aware smile. “Not a lot of people feel that way. Some people are like: ‘You do the best you can in 40 hours a week and let the chips fall where they may.’”

Read the full profile

Watch The Killer on Netflix

David Fincher: “Los directores somos perros adiestrados que aman hacer la voltereta y que los aplaudan después”

El creador de ‘Seven’ y ‘Zodiac’ estrena su última película, ‘El asesino’, y reflexiona sobre la técnica cinematográfica, su fascinación por las mentes criminales, su pésima experiencia en ‘Alien 3′ o su fama de duro en el plató.

Tommaso Koch
29 octubre 2023
El País

Ante David Fincher hay una mesa y un vaso de agua. Lo habitual, la decoración mínima de cualquier entrevista. Pero el talento del director (Denver, 61 años) poco tiene de común. Tanto que, con dos ráfagas de palabras, transforma el anodino cáliz en protagonista de una repentina clase magistral de cine. Cómo podría filmarse, desde dónde, con qué intención alguien lo cogería. Y un largo travelling de disquisiciones técnicas, montado a golpe de frases frenéticas, capaz de convertir en todo un thriller tan insulsa premisa. He aquí la síntesis más breve de la unicidad de su trabajo. La versión larga, en cambio, abraza tres décadas de carrera, películas como Seven, La red social, Perdida, Mank o la serie Mindhunter y el estatus de uno de los cineastas más admirados del planeta. Por su estilo visual, su indagación en los abismos de la mente, su narración envolvente. Un perfeccionista implacable, como El asesino de su último largo—estrenado ahora en una treintena de salas antes de llegar el 10 de noviembre a la plataforma Netflix—. Hasta que, por primera vez, comete un error.

En la trayectoria de Fincher apenas los hay. Salvo, quizás, justo al principio. Tenía 30 años y un sólido prestigio como director de vídeos musicales cuando le ofrecieron debutar en el séptimo arte. Del vértigo de grabar a Madonna o Michael Jackson a otro extraterrestre, más terrorífico aún: Alien 3. No tanto por el xenomorfo, en realidad: le horrorizaron los directivos, la industria, su sed de dinero, sus trabas a la creatividad. A día de hoy, dice que nadie odia esa obra más que él. “Pensaba: ‘No querrán el logo de Twentieth Century Fox sobre una película de mierda’. Y ellos decían: ‘Bueno, mientras se estrene…”, ha contado en alguna ocasión. Y añadió que la experiencia le volvió “un cabrón beligerante”.

Lee la entrevista completa (sólo para suscriptores)

Read the full interview in Spanish (for subscribers only)

David Fincher: “Who doesn’t think they’re an outsider?” David Fincher on hitmen, “incels” and Spider-Man’s “dumb” origin story

Photograph: Frank Ockenfels/Netflix

The director is one of Hollywood’s most unpredictable film-makers. He discusses making a shamelessly pulpy ‘B-movie’, the misogynistic legacy of Fight Club – and the urge to film 100 takes

Steve Rose
October 27, 2023
The Guardian

For anyone who thought David Fincher’s last film, Mank, was the beginning of a new highbrow phase for the director, his latest offering will be something of a jolt. Whereas Mank – on the writing of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane – was a sumptuous, substantial, awards-friendly hymn to old Hollywood (it was nominated for 10 Oscars and won two), his new film, The Killer, is a pulpy, violent, almost wilfully two-dimensional hitman thriller adapted from a comic book. “I will never be a more mature film-maker. I will carry the 12-year-old me with me wherever I go,” he says proudly.

Rather than growing up, it looks like Fincher is having fun – albeit in a highly controlled, Fincheresque way. He is in a particularly relaxed mode when we meet at a hotel in London. He looks healthy and he is full of wit and energy, almost as if this isn’t the umpteenth interview he has done in his 40-year career.

Despite being one of the most renowned and distinctive film-makers in the business, Fincher is not comfortable with being described as an “auteur”, or even an artist. “There’s this fallacy that film directors come in and explain exactly what it is that they want to see and then they go to their trailer,” he says. “And then it’s presented to them and they make a few revisions, and then it’s trapped in aspic for all eternity. That’s just not it. It’s much more sock puppetry and daycare and plumbing – you know, pouring concrete. It’s a lot more physical labour than people probably imagine.”

Nevertheless, with The Killer, he says: “I just didn’t want to take it quite as seriously.” He describes the film as “like a good B-movie”: lean, gripping and, despite some bone-crunching action, surprisingly funny. Michael Fassbender’s lone‑wolf hitman is almost comical in his fastidiousness, from his defiantly un-Bond dress code (“like a German tourist”), to his reusable folding cup to take on jobs, to his playlist of Smiths songs. But his well-laid plans go off the rails, forcing him to break his own rule: “Anticipate, don’t improvise.”

Read the full profile

David Fincher: “Cuando a la gente le das un cuento sin moraleja se confunde y culpa al director”

El director de obras míticas como ‘Seven’, ‘El club de la lucha’ o ‘Zodiac’ regresa al escenario del primer con ‘El asesino’, un ‘thriller’ sobre un ejecutor profesional químicamente perfecto.

Luis Martínez, Venecia
25 octubre 2023
El Mundo

El asesino, el último trabajo de David Fincher (Denver, Colorado, 1962), es, ante todo, una película tremendamente moral. Sí, trata de la historia de un muy inmoral asesino a sueldo, pero, sobre todo, reflexiona sobre las consecuencias de los actos, sobre la ética del trabajo, sobre el arrepentimiento por los errores cometidos y, apurando, sobre la precisión con la que el mal, así en general, hace de las suyas. De paso, la película supone el regreso de su autor a la irrenunciable fascinación por el crimen en su más brutal y evidente crudeza.

De la mano de Michael Fassbender, se cuenta la historia de un asesino a sueldo que se ve obligado a intentar paliar los efectos siempre tremendos de una equivocación fatal. Nos recibe en Venecia poco después de la presentación de la película en la Mostra. En el Lido, precisamente, estrenó hace casi 25 años El club de la lucha.

Lee la entrevista completa / Read the full interview in Spanish

David Fincher: “I haven’t seen Fight Club in 20 years. And I don’t want to”

Best known for grisly thrillers like Seven and Fight Club, the director speaks to GQ about The Killer, his new hitman revenge movie with a blackly comic twist.

Jack King
October 25, 2023
GQ (UK)

He might not like it, but David Fincher has something of a reputation. It goes back to those Seven days — even before. He’s infamously exacting, requiring his actors to perform endless takes. Sometimes, well into the triple-digits. Rumour has it that Jake Gyllenhaal is still scarred.

In the 61-year-old’s latest movie, The Killer, Michael Fassbender portrays a meticulous hitman who obsesses over every… single… detail. He, like his movie’s director, is exhaustive. Exhaustingly so. He’ll take days on a job. He narrates the virtues of patience like a self-help tape stuck on repeat. Sound familiar? Some critics think so, detecting a whiff of self-deprecation in the air.

It seems a totally reasonable, and legitimate, observation. But does Fincher see the parallel? “No,” he tells GQ. “But I can see why the weak-minded…” He stops himself from finishing that sentence with a wry chuckle. Maybe he’s getting softer.

In many ways, The Killer is natural territory for this maestro of the macabre, best known to most for his grislier thrillers — not least Seven, his they-didn’t-get-it-at-the-time masterwork Zodiac, and the prematurely canned Netflix psychodrama Mindhunter. (Oh, and a bloody-knuckled little ‘90s flick called Fight Club.)

Nevertheless, it’s a sharp left-turn from his last feature, the deeply personal Citizen Kane biography Mank, which was written by his dad Jack, who passed away in 2003. “I’ve always liked B-movies,” Fincher says of the shift to this relatively restrained genre exercise. “And Fight Club to Panic Room, what’s that about? I don’t know, it’s kind of where your interests take you. And I spend a lot of time developing three or four things for every one thing I end up doing.”

The result is an eminently re-watchable revenge movie, morbid and sardonic and wickedly funny, the latter of which hasn’t been highlighted nearly enough in early press. Think John Wick, if Keanu Reeves was a sociopath with a penchant for bucket hats, Amazon and inadvertently xenophobic quips about Germans. Oh, and if he loved The Smiths. Especially “How Soon is Now.”

In a hotel room on one of October’s last sunny days, Fincher spoke to GQ all about The Killer, his feelings about AI, and why one of his (many) canned projects would’ve been “a lot” like The Last of Us

Read the full interview

Empire’s Massive David Fincher Celebration Issue Revealed

Empire’s original announcement

Sophie Butcher
September 22, 2023
Empire

It’s always an exciting time in cinema when a new David Fincher movie is on the horizon. The modern master of suspense, Fincher’s filmography ranges from chilling murder-mysteries such as Seven and Zodiac to the generations-spanning romance of The Curious Tale Of Benjamin Button, neo-noir The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and true-life tale The Social Network. Now, he’s about to unleash bold new thriller The Killer, a new kind of hitman movie starring Michael Fassbender (in his first role since 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix) as a meticulous professional assassin whose life spirals out of control when a job goes wrong.

The new issue of Empire features the most in-depth look at the movie you’ll find anywhere on Earth – including an access-all-areas on-set report from three locations across the globe, following Fincher and his crew and witnessing his precise, pulse-pounding filmmaking in action. We have brand-new interviews with Fincher and Fassbender from on set about what makes their mysterious eponymous killer tick, how they’re putting the audience inside his head, their process of working together, pulling off incredible stunt sequences and much, much more. And in a rare, revealing additional retrospective interview, Fincher looks back at some of the most stand-out shots from across his entire career – from Ben Affleck’s cringeworthy smile in Gone Girl, to Panic Room’s swooping long-take, and more – sharing the fascinating stories of how they came to be.

The newsstand cover for our David Fincher special is a moody, rain-splattered compilation of some of his most iconic characters – Morgan Freeman’s Detective Somerset from Seven, Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden from Fight Club, Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth Salander from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the Zodiac killer, Rosamund Pike’s Amy Dunne from Gone Girl, and Michael Fassbender’s new hitman protagonist – illustrated exclusively for Empire by Paul Shipper.

Fincher-focused delights aside, the stacked new issue also contains a deep-dive into the new Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes; a celebration of Gravity’s 10th anniversary with Alfonso Cuarón; a set report from Aardman’s stop-motion sequel Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget; we dig into the much-anticipated British indie How To Have Sex; there are fresh looks at anime series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Bradley Cooper’s musical biopic Maestro, Michael Mann’s racing drama Ferrari; and much, much more.

Trust us – this issue is all Killer, no filler. Empire’s David Fincher celebration issue, saluting the work of one of Hollywood’s biggest names, hits newsstands from Thursday 28 September.

The subscriber cover is a noir-ish vision of Michael Fassbender’s titular assassin from The Killer, stalking cobbled streets for his next target, decked out in tourist get-up so as to go unnoticed – illustrated exclusively for Empire by Corey Brickley.

Alex Godfrey, Empire Features Editor (Twitter):

What’s in the box? The new issue of Empire magazine, that’s what. Incredible, globe-trotting on-set access of The Killer, and brilliant writing, from Nev Pierce, who got up-close and personal with David Fincher, Michael Fassbender, and Tilda Swinton.

Read the previews:

David Fincher’s The Killer Brings Michael Fassbender Back To The Screen: ‘It’s The Type Of Film I Was Salivating To Do’

The Killer’s Protagonist Is A New Kind Of Cinematic Assassin: ‘He’s Not James Bond,’ Says David Fincher

On Set Of David Fincher’s Most Bruising Action Sequence

Empire Issue Preview: The Killer, David Fincher Special, The Hunger Games: Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, Gravity

Making A Murderer: On Set Of The Killer With David Fincher

Pre-order a copy online here

Become an Empire member to access the digital edition on launch day.

The Killer is in cinemas from 27 October and streaming on Netflix from 10 November.

Venice Film Festival: “The Killer” World Premiere

September 3, 2023
Venice Film Festival (YouTube)

Press conference featuring Director of Photography Erik Messerschmidt ASC, Sound Designer Ren Klyce, Director David Fincher, and Editor Kirk Baxter ACE.

Red Carpet featuring Producer Peter Mavromates, Director of Photography Erik Messerschmidt ASC, Writer of the original “The Killer” (“Le tueur”) comic Alexis “Matz” Nolent, Editor Kirk Baxter ACE, Sound Designer Ren Klyce, Director David Fincher. The original stream has the ambient sound turned down to a minimum because it is too busy and noisy, and only barely intelligible in the close-ups.

Venice Film Festival: Why David Fincher Wanted Michael Fassbender to Look ‘Dorky’

THE PROJECTIONIST

Movies are full of glamorous hit men. For “The Killer,” the director put his star in a bucket hat: “The $3,000 suit seems like it’s played out.”

By Kyle Buchanan
Reporting from Venice, Italy
September 3, 2023
The New York Times

It’s been 24 years since David Fincher brought one of his movies to the Venice Film Festival, and the last time, things didn’t go so well.

“I came here with a little film called ‘Fight Club’” in 1999, he told me during an interview on the Lido this week. “We were fairly run out of town for being fascists.” Even before the premiere of that controversial Brad Pitt flick, the director could sense trouble. “I looked down and the youngest person in our row was Giorgio Armani,” Fincher said. “I was like, ‘I’m not sure the guest list is the right guest list for this.’”

So what makes lofty Venice the right place to premiere “The Killer,” Fincher’s new thriller and his first film since the Oscar-winning Hollywood drama “Mank”?

“Nothing,” cracked Fincher. “Venice seems like it’s very highbrow — important movies about important subjects — and then there’s our skeevy little movie.”

Still, Fincher has always enjoyed toying with people’s expectations. He does it even within the world of “The Killer,” which premiered in Venice on Sunday and stars Fassbender as a hired gun who has to improvise after a fatal assignment goes awry.

Read the full profile

David Fincher’s “The Killer” Will Screen at the BFI London Film Festival 2023

“David Fincher’s much-anticipated adaptation of Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon’s graphic novel finally arrives. And it slays!”

The 67th BFI London Film Festival has unveiled its full lineup, which includes galas and special presentations of films.

The festival’s Headline Galas include David Fincher’s The Killer.

Tegan Vevers:

In absolute stillness, an unnamed assassin lurks in the darkness, surveilling his next target with an almost inhuman patience. But beneath his steely resolve is a man wrestling with his inner conscience. When a botched hit leaves the gunman with no choice but to retire from the world of professional killing, his shadowy past isn’t so willing to let him go – making him a target for his former employers, and his own demons. Teaming up with screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker for the first time since Se7en, David Fincher’s cold-blooded action thriller is a masterful work of icy precision, punctuated by meticulously executed, genuinely jaw-dropping action set pieces. Heading up a stellar cast, Michael Fassbender is mesmerising as the titular killer, his poise and physicality perfectly embodying a man losing the control that once defined him.

  • October 5, 2023
    Southbank Centre, Royal Festival Hall
  • October 6, 2023
    Southbank Centre, Royal Festival Hall
  • October 12, 2023
    BFI Southbank, NFT1

Tickets on sale September 12, 2023

BFI Members will get priority booking tickets.

Looking for Assets for the Official “Fight Club” 25th Anniversary Book

An official “Fight Club” 25th Anniversary book is in the making.

And the process of gathering assets to be scanned or photographed has begun:

  • Behind-the-scenes photos
  • Crew photos
  • Production drawings
  • Costumes
  • Props
  • Memorabilia
  • Other supplemental items

Were you a crew member, or did you participate in the making of the film?

Are you a movie props and memorabilia collector?

Do you own any of these items and would like to collaborate?

Send an email to fightclubbookofficial@gmail.com including:

  • Your name
  • If you were a crew member, the position you worked in
  • If you are a collector
  • Your city/state or country
  • A list with a brief description of the items you own.
  • A couple of well-lit photos or scans of the items. These images will be used for selection purposes only.

Participate in the celebration of this stunning, controversial, and influential classic of modern cinema!