After the one-two punch of The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, director David Fincher has taken his time in choosing his next feature project.  He helmed the first couple of episodes of the new Netflix series House of Cards with Kevin Spacey, but with modest box office returns on Dragon Tattoo the follow-up adaptation has been slow-going.  Fincher has a number of options on his plate at the moment, but he’s been pretty passionate about getting his 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea remake off the ground for the past couple of years.

Now it looks like there’s finally some movement on 20,000 Leagues, as Fincher is courting frequent collaborator Brad Pitt to lead the project as sailor Ned Land while Disney decides whether to greenlight the film.  Hit the jump for more details.

A feature film adaptation of Eric Powell’s Dark Horse Comics series The Goon has been in development for many, many years, but it’s had a lot of trouble getting off the ground despite the fact that talent like David Fincher and Paul Giamatti are attached.  An impressive “proof of concept” trailer was put together to show off the tone and visuals of what the proposed animated film would be like, but studios still weren’t biting given the decidedly un-PG material.

Now Fincher (who is producing the film) has decided to start a Kickstarter fund for the film alongside Tim Miller and Jeff Fowler, who will co-direct.  Miller was responsible for creating the fantastic opening title sequence for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and recently helmed the Halo 4 launch trailer that Fincher produced, so The Goon looks to be in great hands. Hit the jump for more, including a really, really, funny video from Fincher, Miller, and Fowler.

While we eagerly await solid word on what project director David Fincher will tackle as his next film, it appears that we’ll be getting our first new Fincher material since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in just eight short days.  Fincher produced the launch trailer for the highly anticipated video game sequel Halo 4, and the spot is set to debut on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on October 18th.  Hit the jump for more details on the trailer including who Fincher tapped to direct the spot.

With the exception of Arrested Development, there is no higher-profile show for Netflix than David Fincher‘s House of Cards.  The series “follows ruthless politician Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey), the majority whip of the House of Representatives, and his wife, Claire (Robin Wright), as they pursue power and all the good things that come with it in Washington.”  Netflix, if it plans to survive, has to develop original content, and Fincher’s adaptation of the BBC TV series could be a major hit.  Since Netflix doesn’t have to abide by the same rules as traditional networks, the New York Times is reporting that the subscription streaming service will premiere all 13 episodes on February 1, 2013.  Fincher developed the series and directed the first two episodes with other episodes being directed by James Foley, Joel Schumacher, Carl Franklin, Alan Coulter, and Charles McDougall.

Coupled with the fourth seasons of Arrested Development, 2013 could be a huge year for Netflix in terms of breaking away from its flagging steaming service, and breaking into a redefinition of broadcast television.  Hit the jump to check out the first poster for House of Cards.

Director David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a sizeable hit when it opened last December, but the film wasn’t the runaway box office success that some were expecting.  It’s global take of $232 million was enough to justify an adaptation of author Steig Larsson’s sequel The Girl who Played with Fire, but development on the follow-up has been slow-going.

Fincher has yet to officially attach himself as the director of Fire, and rumblings of head-butting between the director and Sony during the production of Dragon Tattoo didn’t exactly make Fincher’s return for the sequel a sure thing.  However, in a recent interview Fincher revealed that he’s still very much mulling over a return to the world of Lisbeth Salander.  Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

It appears we’ll never get to see David Fincher’s iteration of Cleopatra.  The director began eyeing the project back in March of 2011, but now it appears that talks between Fincher and Sony have broken off and he’s no longer involved.  Angelina Jolie has long been attached to star in the film based on Stacy Schiff’s book Cleopatra: A Life.  Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button scribe Eric Roth entered talks to pen the screenplay late last year, but the last update about the project came from Fincher himself last December:

“Cleopatra, I haven’t even begun. I’ve just spoken with Angie [Angelina Jolie] and Eric [Roth] and I’m trying to figure out how to weigh in. It’s just a discussion about what can it be, what are people expecting, what do we need to do to destroy that?”

Hit the jump for more on the future of Cleopatra and what other projects Fincher is circling for his feature film follow-up to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

More clips from Keanu Reeves’ film vs. digital documentary Side by Side have landed online, and though I’m incredibly excited for narrative features like Django Unchained and Les Miserables later this year, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that Side by Side will be the most fascinating film I see in 2012.  We recently shared clips of people like Martin Scorsese and The Wachowskis discussing the moviemaking process, and today we’ve got two bona fide titans: James Cameron and David Fincher.  Cameron raves about how much more active the brain is while watching 3D films as opposed to 2D, while Fincher discusses the crux of his job as a director.  They’re both incredibly interesting clips, and if this is the stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor, I can only imagine how in-depth the full film will be.

Hit the jump to watch the clips.  Side by Side hits theaters is currently playing in limited release and is now available on VOD on iTunes.

Filmmaker David Fincher rarely lends his name to projects that he isn’t directing, so when he actually does decide to take a producing credit on a film it’s not to be taken lightly.  Heat Vision reports that Fincher has committed to produce Mean Creek writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes’ thriller IOU.  Plot details on the project are firmly under wraps, but Michael Arlen Ross (Turistas) wrote the script and Estes will be directing.  Fincher actually has a connection to the project as Media Rights Capital is producing both IOU and Fincher’s upcoming Netflix series House of Cards, for which he directed the pilot and serves as executive producer.

Estes wrote and directed last year’s Sundance pic The Details, and he’s currently writing the script for Matt Reeves’ Frankenstein thriller This Dark Endeavor.  The only other feature films for which Fincher has served as a producer are 2005’s Lords of Dogtown and, strangely, the 2006 romantic comedy Love and Other Disasters.  He’s currently busy with House of Cards, but hopefully his next directorial feature will be announced soon.  Candidates for Fincher’s next film include 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the period biopic Cleopatra, and the less likely Dragon Tattoo sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire.

It’s been a long time coming, but director David Fincher’s 1997 thriller The Game is finally headed to Criterion later this year.  Fincher previously talked about the release in an interview with Steve in 2010, and he stated that the hold-up was probably his fault as he still needed to look at the full cut before it could be released.  The wait is finally over, as Criterion announced that the disc will hit DVD and Blu-ray on September 25th of this year.  Included is a new, restored digital transfer supervised by Fincher and director of photography Harris Savides, an alternate 5.1 surround audio mix, commentary by Fincher, Savides and star Michael Douglas, and much more.

The Game is quite the twisted thriller, and while it’s not my favorite Fincher film it’s definitely worth checking out.  Hit the jump to check out the Criterion cover (in keeping with Fincher’s other Criterion discs, it’s black), a full list of features and the trailer for the film.

The first image from director David Fincher’s upcoming Netflix series House of Cards is now online.  The show is based on the British miniseries of the same name and stars Kevin Spacey as a “wily, murderous politician worming his way to the White House” in Washington D.C.  Fincher is directing the pilot, and Netflix has committed to producing and airing two seasons of 13 episodes each that will stream through the subscription service.  Fincher seems a perfect fit to tackle the dirty game of politics, and the series reteams him the director with Spacey and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo star Robin Wright.  A specific airdate has yet to be announced, but the series is set to be unveiled sometime in 2013.

Hit the jump to check out the first image of Spacey and Wright in what the former calls, “[not] your daddy’s West Wing.”

Even though the trilogy had already been made into films (with many of those film’s cast members moving on to American roles), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was such an international phenomenon that the notion that people don’t like reading subtitles allowed for an American version. To make it into a big prestige project, director David Fincher and writer Steve Zaillian were brought in to adapt the successful novel for the big screen. Here Lisbeth Salander is played by Rooney Mara – who got an Oscar nomination for her work – and Mikael Blomkvist is played by Daniel Craig. Their characters investigate the Vanger family at the insistence of Henrik (Christopher Plummer), because he thinks someone in the family killed his niece. Our review of the Blu-ray of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo follows after the jump.

The documentary Side by Side is certainly one of the most interesting projects I’ve learned about in the past few months, and now it looks as though the film will be heading to a theater near you this summer. Tribeca Film announced today that it has acquired North American rights to the documentary produced and presented by Keanu Reeves. The film explores the evolving landscape of filmmaking, specifically the advent of digital and how its popularity affects traditional filmmaking. While that subject matter alone is worth exploring, Reeves and director Chris Kenneally sat down with nearly every master filmmaker working today to get their musings on the future of moviemaking.

Side by Side features interviews with James Cameron, David Fincher, George Lucas, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Stephen Soderbergh, the Wachowskis, and many, many more. You can watch the trailer right here. Tribeca Film is planning a multi-platform summer release for the pic, followed by a broadcast premiere early next year in addition to screenings at college campuses and film schools across the country. The film is having its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. Hit the jump to read the full press release.

In David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Rooney Mara tore up every second that she was on screen as the complicated and complex computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. For that Academy Award-nominated performance, she was honored with a Virtuoso Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF). Collider was there to cover and attend the event, and we’ve compiled the highlights of what the actress had to say, both on the press line and during the Q&A.

While there, Rooney Mara talked about what the whole award season experience has been like for her, how she felt like she didn’t get to know director David Fincher at all from the four days she worked on The Social Network, that she doesn’t know when the next films in the Millennium trilogy will start shooting but that she would love to do them simultaneously, and that if Fincher decided not to direct the other films, it would be hard without him but she would get through it with his blessing. Check out what she had to say after the jump.

As I’ve been covering awards season pretty extensively here on the site over the past few months, I figured it would be appropriate to (foolishly) try to predict the upcoming Oscar nominations. It’s been a fairly tame year, as a few frontrunners were singled out early in the race and have held their ground throughout the grueling awards season. We haven’t been without a few surprises, as Steven Spielberg’s War Horse took a massive tumble following snubs from most of the major guilds, and David Fincher has surged back into the race bringing his adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with him.

Though there are plenty of safe bets when it comes to the 2012 Oscar nominations, there are still a few wildcards and tricky categories. I’ve put on my prognosticating cap (those interested can purchase one of these nifty hats at your local Target) and compiled a list of who and what I think will make the cut. Hit the jump to see how I think the nods will stack up when they’re announced on January 24th.

A curious little website has popped up announcing a new documentary produced by Keanu Reeves that tackles one of the foremost issues facing filmmakers today: the advent of digital filmmaking. Entitled Side by Side, the documentary takes an in-depth look at the issue of film vs. digital, and “examines all aspects of filmmaking – from capture, to edit, to visual effects, to color correction, to distribution to archive.” Through interviews with numerous well-respected masters of the medium, Side by Side “explores what has been gained, what is lost and what the future might bring.” Take this sample quote from Christopher Nolan:

“No credible source really has been claiming to have invented something that is aesthetically superior to film at this point.”

The documentary will feature Reeves interviewing filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Lana and Andy Wachowski, George Lucas, James Cameron, Steven Soderbergh, and many more. Hit the jump for more details.