David Fincher: Comic Guru?

Is David Fincher the next "comics-to-movie" guru? I just got finished reading an interview with the man over at (of all things!) the MTV website. Not that he wouldn't have an interview there, it's just the idea of me even being there in the first place.

If you don't know who David Fincher is, well, that's bad news for you, because one day someone's is going start a fight with you and you won't know why. Fincher was a hit music video director in the 80's and early 90's, doing videos for Sting, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, George Michael and 3 videos each for Madonna ("Vogue", I loved that video when I was a teen) and Paula Abdul. Before that he worked in special effects on such films as Return of the Jedi, The Temple of Doom, and The NeverEnding Story. Not a bad career, huh? But that was before. Then Fincher was picked to try and make the disaster that ended up being named Alien3. This got him the big work, namely as the director on a little known project called "Se7en". This of course led to "Fight Club" and even (supposedly) bigger movies.

So what does all of this have to do with comics, you ask? Well according to the interview several of his next few projects are comic related. First up is "The Killer" by Jacamon & Matz. Brad Pitt's company, Plan B (also making World War Z) will be producing, and they already have a writer for the script. Next up are the series of shorts Fincher is doing for the magazine Heavy Metal. From what I understand they are CG animated 3D. He is also waiting to get a good script on the "Rendezvous With Rama", the classic by Arthur C. Clarke, which I'm sure many of you have read. Apparently Morgan Freeman is also involved with that. Last, but not least, is the point of this whole thing. Did you ever read a little book called "Fortune and Glory"? About Brian Bendis trying to get his book "Goldfish" turned into a movie? Well if you did read it, you will remember that by the end, they had given up on "Goldfish" and were talking to people about "Torso". Well, David Fincher is making "Torso". Ehren Kruger has written a screenplay, and they're talking to Matt Damon to play Elliot Ness.

Y'know, I didn't think about that actually. With the writers strike going on now, people aren't turning in any new movie idea's. Are studio execs taking this time to get caught up on their comic reading? Could we see an even bigger tidal wave of new films developed from comics? Maybe we will get a Jack "Starman" Knight movie out of it.

-Dan