By Though he launched his career with “Alien 3,” filmmaker David Fincher has stayed away from sequels ever since – opting instead to focus on original films or adaptations.
In his time though, his name has been attached to a few – one was a scrapped version of the third “Mission: Impossible” many years ago – the final film ended up being directed by J.J. Abrams.
Another, and arguably the closest to making it to fruition and missing out, would’ve seen him re-team with Brad Pitt for a follow-up to 2013’s “World War Z” film adaptation of the Max Brooks book.
Fincher boarded the project in 2017 after J.A. Bayona exited. But budgetary concerns led to the project being cancelled and Fincher moving on to his Netflix film “Mank.”
Out promoting his new film “The Killer,” Fincher tells GQ UK he is glad he didn’t do “World War Z 2” now because HBO’s acclaimed and mostly faithful 2023 TV series adaptation of the 2012 video game “The Last of Us” already covered the same territory in the series premiere’s opening minutes:
“It was a little like ‘The Last of Us.’ I’m glad that we didn’t do what we were doing, because ‘The Last of Us’ has a lot more real estate to explore the same stuff.
In our title sequence, we were going to use the little parasite… they used it in their title sequence, and in that wonderful opening with the Dick Cavett, David Frost-style talk show.”
Both the game and series focus on reluctant smuggler Joel (Pedro Pascal) forced to take a young woman with a secret named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across a harsh post-apocalyptic landscape.
The tale has drawn much acclaim for its focus on character, emotion and themes over action, a far cry from the first “World War Z” where its action was its selling point.
Fincher’s “The Killer” opens in cinemas Friday and hits Netflix next week.
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