Fincher gave us a quick update on its progress:
“Eric’s been working on it and Tim’s been working on it, and Jeff (Fowler). People continue to work on it and refine stuff, but it’s hard for me because I’m in Sweden, so I can’t really make many production meetings, but the attempt is to in January really go out and try and figure out a price that makes sense.
“I don’t know why you can spend $200 million on ‘The incredibles’ but you can’t spend $50 million on ‘The Goon,’ or $130 million on ‘Kung Fu Panda’ and $50 million on ‘The Goon,'” he mused.
Bringing up that comic adaptation reminded us that Fincher had been developing an adaptation of Charles Burns’ award-winning graphic novel Black Hole for a number of years. In fact we spoke to Burns himself about it three years ago, but apparently, Fincher has already moved past the original screenplay by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery:
“It’s a really great script by Dante Harper, so the hope is that will win out,” he said. “It’s so weird. It’s so great, because it would be great to see. It’s a very tough… there’s make-up FX and digital FX that are expensive and to do it right, you gotta do it just right, because it has to challenge your idea of the human body.”
Another film for Fincher, announced more recently, was his attachment to Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which just got a new writer in Andrew Kevin Walker a few weeks back, taking a crack at the screenplay begun by Scott J. Burns (Contagion).
“I don’t know what came before me,” he said about the film’s long development process. “We’re plugging away, trying to get a script that sort of satisfies all of the… you know, it’s a tricky thing because it’s a $200 million 3D thing done in water, and you don’t want to go off half-cocked. You can find yourself with a $75 million overage in a movie that completely takes place underwater, especially in 3D. 3D is a whole different thing for reflective sources.”
The director has already had the ubiquitous meeting with James Cameron to discuss filming in 3D.
We thought we might have figured out why Fincher was interested in telling the origin story of Captain Nemo, having already done films that featured anti-heroes like John Doe in Se7en and Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, but in fact, it was something quite unexpected:
“The thing that’s interesting to me is a science fiction movie that takes place five years after the Civil War, the idea of ‘What does science fiction look like through the eyes of somebody 120 years ago?'”
We may be waiting a little longer before we see David Fincher’s first true foray into science fiction, but The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opens on Tuesday, December 20. Look for our full interview with Mr. Fincher sometime before then, over on ComingSoon.net.
