Ever since Disney acquired Star Wars, a whole pile of projects have been announced and then cancelled. Some got pretty far into development, like Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron movie, which enjoyed a flashy announcement video. Others were just quietly smothered, like the movie trilogy Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were supposed to make before the world saw how they ended their show.
Recently, we learned that Adam Driver and Steven Soderbergh pitched a Kylo Ren sequel movie to Lucasfilm and Disney, but couldn’t overcome the fundamental problem of Ren getting knocked off in The Rise of Skywalker. Now, a new report claims another Hollywood legend almost made his mark on the franchise, only for the deal to fall apart over the question of creative control.
David Fincher has apparently been considered for multiple Star Wars movies.
According to Hollywood insider Jeff Sneider, Fight Club and Gone Girl director David Fincher was in discussions with Lucasfilm about developing a movie set after The Rise of Skywalker. However, he demanded final-cut privileges, which Lucasfilm was unwilling to give him, and so talks fell through.
While this leak is unconfirmed, it wouldn’t have been the first time Fincher was considered for a Star Wars movie. In 2017, he discussed being briefly in the running to direct what would become The Rise of Skywalker. “You’d have to really clear your head, I think,” Fincher told Empire. “You’d have to really be sure this is what you wanted to do because either way it’s two years of your life, 14 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Fincher was in the running to direct the sequel trilogy’s final chapter, but J.J. Abrams took it on instead.
A David Fincher Star Wars movie would have been notably different from the sequel trilogy: while all three sequels were helmed by writer-directors, Fincher solely directs, so someone else would have been brought on to write the script. That hasn’t stopped Star Wars movies before, but the end product could have been quite different from what we got.
Fincher is busy with his Netflix work — including that strange Squid Game remake — but if he’s chatted with Lucasfilm multiple times now, maybe it’ll happen again. We’ve been hearing a lot recently about Star Wars movies that almost made it to production, but one of them will have to reach the finish line eventually, right?
