Tag: Netflix

Here’s Every Sitcom Code Name Michael Fassbender Uses in ‘The Killer’

The titular assassin of the new David Fincher thriller travels the world under a few familiar pseudonyms.

John Dilillo
November 10, 2023
Tudum by Netflix

What’s a hit man without a code name? James Bond is 007; The Gray Man’s Court Gentry is Sierra Six; even Get Smart’s Maxwell Smart goes by Agent 86 when he’s on the clock. In David Fincher’s new assassin thriller The Killer, the titular professional has more than a few pseudonyms, and they all have a shared origin. Played by Michael Fassbender, this killer has a taste for television — every one of his aliases is borrowed from a classic sitcom. “He may have been raised on [television],” says The Killer screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (who previously teamed with Fincher on their shared breakout Se7en). “It may have been more of a parent to him than any parent.”

The running gag originated with an earlier Fincher/Walker collaboration. “I was doing a polish on Fight Club,” Walker tells Tudum. “Fincher and I realized that Edward Norton’s character had to have little name badges on, or sign up sheets for his support groups he would go to. And Fincher was like, ‘Well, let’s just use names from Planet of the Apes, like Dr. Zaius or Cornelius, etcetera.’ ”

When Walker began working on The Killer, he decided to similarly sneak casual sitcom name-drops into scenes where the main character introduces himself, as a subtle Easter egg for particularly discerning viewers. Fincher persuaded him to blow the idea up further. “I started even more obscure than they are now, with characters like Mr. Mooney,” foil to Lucille Ball on her ’60s vehicle The Lucy Show, Walker says. “It’s the genius of Fincher that he was like, ‘OK, here’s your kind of silly little hidden joke. Let’s bring it forward.’ ”

Under Fincher’s watchful eye, the production made sure to spotlight each and every alias. “When he was shooting a lot of the car interiors and doing a few tiny reshoots and inserts,” Walker says of Fincher, “he shot close-ups of plane tickets, close-ups of the driver’s license, he made sure to show every single name first and last.” You can see each of those names — as well as a handy guide to which sitcoms they spring from — below. 

Read the full article

How David Fincher Turned ‘The Killer’ Into a Mean, Lean Punch to the Gut

Fassbender, Fincher, and Swinton on the set of ‘The Killer.’
MILES CRIST/NETFLIX

The filmmaker on working with Michael Fassbender, that Smiths soundtrack, and how his adaptation of a French comic about an assassin became a Seventies B movie.

David Fear
November 8, 2023
Rolling Stone

THE MAN IS a consummate professional. In the outside world, he could be anyone — just another ridiculous looking dude somewhere between the ages of 32 and 48, the everyguy in line behind you at an Ace Hardware store or in front of you at McDonald’s. But sitting here, in an unfinished WeWork office space, is this slender, limber apex predator in his natural habitat, and an extremely patient one. He’s perched here for days, just staring out the window at a ritzy apartment in Paris. Watching. Waiting. Whiling away the hours, doing nothing. It’s a key part of the job. “If you can’t stand the boredom,” he says, via voiceover narration, “the work is not for you.”

Should you suggest to David Fincher — world-class filmmaker, notorious perfectionist, and a gentleman who genuinely appreciates a good joke — that the line spoken by the title character of his new film The Killer is also a warning to audiences hiding in plain sight, he will laugh. The director will go into detailed explanations about why the unnamed hero (or rather, its “hero”: “Massive air quotes at work here”), played by Michael Fassbender, is not just a hit man but a very, very unreliable narrator. He’ll mention that the script, written by Se7en scribe Andrew Kevin Walker, borrows the idea of long interior monologues in lieu of nonstop action directly from the source material. And he’ll admit that they knew that any movie “probably being sold with an image of a guy with piano wire in his hand or putting someone into cold storage,” yet “starts out with 25 minutes of someone sleeping on sheetrock in an empty office, musing as to what it’s all about,” might potentially have viewers wondering what they’ve stumbled into. But Fincher will not say you’re wrong.

Read the full profile

David Fincher on filmmaking and his twisted new comedy, The Killer

As his new film gets ready to hit Netflix, the legendary director talks to Nick Chen about The Smiths, Michael Fassbender, and the similarities between directors and hitmen.

Nick Chen
November 6, 2023
Dazed

To prove the catchiness of “Unhappy Birthday” by The Smiths, David Fincher sings to me the opening refrain with a huge grin. For our conversation, the 61-year-old director of feel-bad fare like Se7en, Zodiac, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is in surprisingly good spirits. Or bad spirits, given the miserabilist nature of The Smiths.

In Fincher’s sleek, bleak thriller The Killer, his second feature for Netflix, there are 11 killer songs by The Smiths on the soundtrack. An unnamed hitman (Michael Fassbender) – simply The Killer, in the credits – calms his nerves when operating a sniper rifle by listening to “How Soon Is Now?”, the tremolo reverberating through his earphones. “That guitar shouldn’t be comforting, because it’s sinister,” says Fincher, speaking in Ham Yard Hotel during the London Film Festival. “But to me, it’s comforting. We originally had Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees. [Trent] Reznor was like, ‘Every time we use The Smiths, it’s just funny.’”

After the black-and-white seriousness of Mank, Fincher has returned to the kind of big-screen, popcorn fun he delivered in Gone Girl – except it also mischievously isn’t. Adapted from a French graphic novel, The Killer is less of a John Wick-esque, gun-toting adventure and more observing an assassin do admin to bypass security measures. He shuffles through paperwork to identify home addresses, and fills in endless forms to join a victim’s gym. To remain faceless, he picks up Amazon purchases from a locker and eats at a McDonald’s that doesn’t involve entering a building. If it weren’t too meta, he’d wind down by using someone else’s password to stream Fincher’s House of Cards on Netflix.

Read the full profile

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

THE KILLER: More Stills

October 27, 2023
Netflix

After a fateful near miss an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal.

Netflix Presents Michael Fassbender “THE KILLER”, with Tilda Swinton.

Click to view the gallery of the newly available official stills:

Release Date: In Select Theaters October 27  / On Netflix November 10

THE KILLER: Official Trailer

October 27, 2023
Netflix

After a fateful near miss an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal.

Netflix Presents: Michael Fassbender “THE KILLER”

Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell, Kerry O’Malley, Sala Baker

With Sophie Charlotte and Tilda Swinton

Casting: Laray Mayfield
Sound Design: Ren Klyce
Music: Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
Costume Designer: Cate Adams
Editor: Kirk Baxter ACE
Production Design: Donald Graham Burt
Director of Photography: Erik Messerschmidt ASC
Executive Producer: Alexandra Milchan
Producers: William Doyle, Peter Mavromates
Produced By: Ceán Chaffin p.g.a.

Based on the graphic novel series “The Killer”
Written by Alexis “Matz” Nolent
Illustrated by Luc Jacamon
Originally published in the French language by Editions Casterman

Screenplay By: Andrew Kevin Walker

Directed By: David Fincher

Release Date: In Select Theaters October 27  / On Netflix November 10