The Career of Emma Stone

Considered one of the 55 faces of the future by Nylon Magazine and ranked #49 on Maxim magazine’s Hot 100 of 2010 list, knock out Emma Stone has risen rapidly to fame in her relatively short Hollywood career. Although many might associate her most commonly with teen high school roles, such as in Superbad, her versatility and talent as an actress is undeniable; best evident in such great films as Paper Man and Zombieland.

With her recent excellent turn in Easy A and casting as Gwen Stacy in the Spider-Man reboot both being sure to propel her career to new heights, we thought we’d take a look over Stone’s career so far, as well as the films that she currently has in the pipeline.

The New Partridge Family (TV movie) (2005)
Role: Laurie Partridge

After persuading her parents to let her move to Hollywood at the age of 14 by presenting them with a PowerPoint presentation, making them popcorn and crying, Stone’s acting career took off after she entered the VH1 show In Search of the New Partridge Family in 2004 (at this time going by Emily Stone, rather than Emma), which mostly involved her showcasing her singing talents.

The competition awarded her the role of Laurie in The New Partridge Family, but the show unfortunately didn’t get past the pilot episode stage (the said pilot also being labelled a ‘TV movie’).


Drive (TV series) (2007)
Role: Violet

Stone then took to playing one off roles in single episodes of the TV shows Medium, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Malcolm in the Middle and then Lucky Louie, before finally landing a main role in Drive; a show about a cross country illegal road race with a $32 million prize, in which Nathan Fillion played the lead.

Stone played Violet, the smart and obedient daughter of John Trimble (Dylan Baker), who together partner as contestants in the race.

The show was average in quality, but its ratings didn’t hold and it was axed after only four episodes had aired. Six episodes of the show’s first season were shown before the show was taken off the air, and a further two episodes were later posted online for fans, on which Stone has commented: “I cry a lot in those last two episodes,” and jokingly “so if you want to see me ball my face off [then check them out]”.

Superbad (2007)
Role: Jules

Stone then starred in her first film, Greg Mottola’s teen comedy Superbad, in which she played the lead female role, Jules; the attractive high school girl that Jonah Hill’s character Seth sets his sights on.

On the thrill of starring in her first film Stone has commented: “It felt like a big deal because it was my first movie. It could have been a straight to DVD science video and I would have been like ‘this is awesome!’.”

Seen widely by many, and Stone putting in a charming and likeable turn, the film brought her to the forefront of public attention like never before and set her Hollywood career truly in motion.

The Rocker (2008)
Role: Amelia

For her second film Stone again opted for a teen comedy outing – the decent and understated, if predictable rock comedy The Rocker. Stone played the strong-willed bass player of a band destined for glory (for which she actually learnt how to play the bass guitar and the songs in the film), alongside lead and comedy legend Rainn Wilson.

Clearly her love of music was one thing that drew Stone to this particular role; she has stated: “I’m a huge music fan. I usually say that if I had been born with a musical inclination it would’ve been great. The Beatles changed everything for me and I wanted to be a journalist for Rolling Stone.”

Stone’s character Amelia is given minimal development beyond a scarcely dealt with relationship with the band’s lead singer and one tantrum involving a hair disaster, yet she still shines here when given the screen time.


The House Bunny (2008)
Role: Natalie

Next Stone took on a prominent role in House Bunny, playing sorority president Natalie, alongside lead Anna Faris. Since this is set at college, this is the first time that Stone played a role older than a teenager.

The film is pretty dire, as you might expect, but Stone’s role before (and underneath) the pretence of recently transformed glam girl at least is likeable as a nerdy and cute intellectual; Natalie serving as the most rational and normal member of a sorority house full of abnormal individuals.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)
Role: Allison Vandermeersh

In Ghosts of Girlfriends Past Stone played a geeky, 1980s ghost from McConaughey’s character’s past (again taking on the role of a nerd who fails to get men to take interest in her, like with her role of Natalie, pre-makeover), who takes him on a guided tour of his life so far in order to show him the error of his ways (the film clearly being derived from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol).

The film itself is relatively poor, yet Stone’s ghost Vandermeersh provides some marginally decent humour and is certainly the best of the three ghosts that visit McConaughey.

Although still sticking to the comedy genre and still playing a high school teen, then, this is the first time that Stone started to play against type a little. Discarding her good looks completely here, and not playing a character that is given much characterisation at all, this role is all about her getting to toy with the comedy. Given the fact that Stone’s idol is Gilda Radner, and that all of Stone’s films up to this point had been comedies, clearly roles where she gets to show off her comic talents is something that she looks for when selecting which films to take on.

Paper Man (2009)
Role: Abby

This wonderful indie film served as a very different direction for Stone’s career and turned out to be a major breakout role for the young actress, as she delivered her best and most mature performance to date (and indeed a great performance by any standards).

The film overall is incredibly charming and shares strong parallels with Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation in the sense that it is about a friendship (verging on a relationship) that forms between an elder man (Jeff Daniels) and a young girl (Stone), both of whom are lost somehow in their lives, who manage to find solace in one another.

Stone’s role here as Abby is a complex one; the character is one who is outwardly headstrong and confident, yet at the same time wrought within by bitterness and a kind of masochistic nature (she continues to date a guy who treats her like trash and her invisible friend‘s constructed role is to be madly in love with her – which she casts off cruelly, repeatedly; his is a role designed to assuage her insecurity).

The way in which Abby acts towards Daniels’ character Richard also has a delicate complexity to it which Stone masters well; Abby seems for a long time unsure about whether Richard is driven by a harmless desire for friendship or by a perverted inclination for younger girls, and has to play reactions to both assumptions back and forth repeatedly as Abby keeps changing her mind about him, based on his confusing and sporadic antics. There are also a few points in the film were Stone has to portray moments of quite taught emotion, which Stone nails perfectly.

Although this is still a teen role for Stone, there is no superficial quality or orientation towards a teen audience with this film. And although both the film and Stone’s role are quite serious in tone, this is not a complete departure from comedy for the young actress; Ryan Reynolds livens proceedings up by playing Richard’s imaginary friend – a superhero named Captain Excellent (Reynolds clad in a muscle revealing superhero costume with bleached blonde hair) – providing some moments of great comedy.

This underrated and poorly marketed little gem is well worth a watch for anyone who enjoys a decent indie film and is certainly an essential watch for Stone fans.

Zombieland (2009)
Role: Wichita

In the same year, Stone then starred in the excellent and much loved Zombieland; a clever, cool and heartfelt take on the zombie comedy.

Stone played Wichita, in what director Ruben Fleischer describes as the classic femme fatale role; an attractive female who seduces and cons men into bad situations. This is still by far her coolest outing to date. Wichita is alluring, strong-willed and brimming with confidence (not to mention attractively feisty as she battles off Zombies with ease); all traits we have seen Stone play many times before in her career, but this time we have far less of the teen, ‘girl next door’ element. Wichita also seems a little older than most of the roles Stone had played before.

The character of Wichita is a little thinly developed on the whole, with only a short flashback shown that serves to reinforce her role as femme fatale, but that doesn’t stop Stone’s acting talent showing through, as well as her comic talent shining wonderfully in such scenes as the Ghostbusters scene re-enactment.

Due to its quality, the film has gathered quite a following; leading to a strong anticipation and eagerness from fans for a sequel, which Stone states she is up for, whilst also implying that it is already underway.

With regards to her seeming penchant for high school teen roles, and her starting to take on more adult roles with such films as Zombieland and several of the films she currently has in the pipeline, Stone has commented:

“I don’t really know that it’s ever a conscious choice on my part. I think that when scripts come along, if it’s something I really want to do and I’m going to go audition for it, I think that I understand the age of the character because it’s written in the script, but I just try to bring that person to life in any way that that character is supposed to be. Like if the character’s 27 and then in the next part is 17, I get to look at it through different eyes because they’ve had 10 years less experience or more experience. So, try to adjust to that a bit but as far as why they keep letting me do all this stuff, I can’t answer that. I guess I’m really lucky in terms of that, but it’s been nice to be able to kind of jump all over the chart and not just play one certain age.”

Paper Man and Zombieland proved Stone capable of acting outside the clichéd high school teen role typically associated with her, and allowed her to finally start showing her versatility as an actress, whilst at the same time allowing her to start starring in better quality films.

Marmaduke (2010)
Role: Mazie (voice)

In her first venture into children’s films, Stone lent her voice to the character of Mazie in the critically and commercially slated Marmaduke. Straight after this she also appeared in a short and quite funny joke ‘iphone murder apps’ commercial.

Easy A (2010)
Role: Olive

In her first truly starring role to date, Stone reverts back to the high school teen role yet again, playing Olive, a girl who uses the school’s rumour mill to advance her social and financial standing. But where this alternates from her previous teen outings is that this is an ingeniously engineered and clever film that works as a wonderful subversion of the teen comedy.

On this being her first truly starring role and how she prepared for such, Stone has commented:

“I don’t know that I prepared any differently because of the size of the role. Mainly, I put more pressure on myself for sure but I don’t think it had to do with the size of the role. I think it had more to do with just wanting to make sure that the Olive on the page came to life accurately.”

And on the risk of the film’s topic possibly glamorising promiscuity among young girls (a relevant fear), Stone has commented:

“I was actually concerned with that for quite a while and still have a lot of thoughts about that, but what I’ve been able to kind of whittle it down to in my mind at least is what Olive learned from this entire experience. The fact is she’s not really doing it. She is a virgin, so she’s not truly being promiscuous. But then again, does it glamorize fake promiscuity or telling people to be promiscuous, which is not good as well? I think what she learns by this whole pact of lying to everyone and watching her life kind of crumble around her and realizing that if she had just told the truth from the beginning, she could have been saved from all that.”

Why Stone hasn’t shot to stardom long before now is one of the great mysteries of Hollywood. Her gorgeous looks, sexily husky voice and excellent comic timing has always marked her out as a unique force in the business, and her versatility and talent as an actress has been proven before now (see above), but the role of Olive proves the perfect vehicle for Stone to showcase her skills, assuring her star status now, if it was ever in question before. Easy A can certainly be marked among the best films in Stone’s career so far.

‘Untitled Comedy’ (2010)
Role: Unknown

Rumoured to possibly be titled Movie 43, this is a feature film composed entirely of short comedy segments, which features a large range of well known stars, some of which you would certainly associate with the comedy field but also many whom you wouldn’t. This should provide Stone with a great field upon which to show off her excellent comic timing and talents, presuming she has a relatively major role in the film.

Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)
Role: Hannah

This will be about a father’s life unravelling while he deals with a marital crisis and tries to manage his relationship with his children. Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell also star, and musician Josh Groban will play the boyfriend of Stone’s character.





Friends with Benefits (2011)
Role: Unknown

Friends with Benefits will be directed by Will Gluck, who also directed Easy A, making this the first time that Stone has worked with the same director twice (it is clear to see why Stone opted to work with him again after the quality and success of Easy A). Also starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake, the film is about a relationship between two friends becoming complicated when they decide to get romantic.


The Help (2011)
Role: Eugenia ‘Skeeter’ Phelan

Again grabbing the lead role in a film, in The Help, which is set in Mississippi during the 1960s, Stone will play Skeeter, a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends’ lives – and a small Mississippi town – upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Ultimately this is said to be a look at what happens when a southern town’s unspoken code of rules and behaviour is shattered by three courageous women who strike up an unlikely friendship. The film also stars Bryce Dallas Howard.

The Croods (2012)
Role: Eep (voice)

This will be the second time Stone has leant her voice to a children’s film. The Croods is set in the prehistoric era, when a man’s position as Leader of the Hunt is threatened by the arrival of a prehistoric genius who comes up with revolutionary new inventions, like fire.

‘Untitled Spider-man reboot’ (2012)
Role: Gwen Stacy

The news recently hit that Stone would be playing the role of Gwen Stacy in the Spider-Man reboot alongside Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker, which came as somewhat of a surprise to many, following initial rumours that she would be playing Mary Jane.
Allegedly, what happened is that Stone said that she was interested in doing the movie, but didn’t want to commit to a series of films. Since the character of Gwen Stacy is only going to be in the first couple of films (there’s speculation that she might even meet her bridge-based death at the end of the first film), Stone – who the studio was very keen on after she helped give them one of their most successful films of the year, Easy A- asked if she could play the part of Gwen Stacy instead, so that she could remain free to pursue other projects (one of which being the film below).

This could be looked upon as a smart career decision by Stone; as discussed, she has played high school teens too often, so signing up to a series of films in which she plays just that again might have proven too restricting and damaging for her future prospects – this way she is free to expand her talents as an actress in a more diverse range of roles. On the flip side, however, this is the spider-man franchise, and although there is no guarantee that these films will be good, being guaranteed a role in several of these films would certainly be a career booster for any actor or actress.

She seems to have opted for a happy medium; Gwen Stacy could, after all, appear in more than just one of these films. Stone is also a natural blonde anyway (Judd Apatow is allegedly the one who asked her to change her hair colour to red for Superbad and she kept the colour after that), making her a great choice for Gwen Stacy. Despite Bryce Dallas Howard being a more than competent actress, she was hardly right for the role of Gwen; let us hope that Stone will fit into those shoes a little better, undoubtedly bringing her usual charm.

21 Jump Street (2012) (Rumoured)
Role: Jules (rumoured)

This is a remake/updating of the 1987 TV series that starred a young Johnny Depp. It is rumoured that Stone is currently being courted by the studio to play the role of Tom Hansen’s girlfriend, Jules. The script is co-written by Stone’s ex-Superbad co-star Jonah Hill, who is also confirmed to star in the film, playing Doug Penhall.

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David Fincher’s odd directorial choices

There are several major directors, who if you took a retrospective glance over their careers so far, you would notice make a conscious effort never to make the same kind of film twice; who aim to continually surprise by selecting projects that veer in a completely different direction to the films that have made before. Danny Boyle and Darren Aronofsky are good examples of this, and Black Swan and 127 Hours are great examples of how these directors continue to tread new ground with their latest efforts.

Since each new choice by these directors’ seems so fresh and so juxtaposed to their previous work, the films they do select can often be perceived as odd choices for them to opt for. Sometimes the choices seem strange for the simple fact that they differ so much to their previous project (e.g. Aronofsky’s jump from The Fountain to The Wrestler), and sometimes the selections are intrinsically odd (e.g. Punch Drunk Love).

David Fincher is another director who is known for this. With his latest outing, The Social Network (a film about Facebook of all things) seeming a particularly strange choice (both reflectively and intrinsically) and one set against type, we thought we’d take a look over Fincher’s past and future choices and just how odd each decision was.

Alien 3 (1992)



Fincher’s first film, Alien 3, was a critical and commercial failure. It is well known that Fincher despises this film and his involvement with it. In 2009, at the BFI Southbank, Fincher revealed:

“I had to work on it for two years, got fired off it three times and I had to fight for every single thing. No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me.”

Fincher’s decision to take on this project can hardly be deemed an odd one for a filmmaker trying to gain a foothold in the industry. The previous Alien films were huge successes, catapulting their directors into the blockbuster league, so what director in their right mind wouldn’t grab up the opportunity to direct the third installment in this excellent SF series and potentially become a part of that cohort?

Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien also had blown Fincher’s mind when he saw it at the age of 17 and he admits that it was one driving factor that sent him hurtling towards Hollywood. Regarding Alien 3, he commented:

“It would be stupid for me to say that I didn’t know what I was getting into… I always held out for something like this.”

One 1991 article (written a year before the film’s release) reveals: ‘The movie is certainly extraordinary for the choice of its director. David Fincher is probably the only 27-year-old first-time filmmaker ever hired to direct a $50 million movie (Fox’s official number, give or take a few million). Add to that the first director was let go while sets were being built, that the line producer was fired just before the start date, that the script wasn’t finished until two weeks into shooting, and you have a young man with his hands extremely full. As one of his friends puts it, “He was right out of Naval Academy School, and he got put at the helm of the Titanic”.’ It is easy to see why Fincher failed, then, with such a tortured project laid upon him.

On exactly how Fincher feels the film was a failure, he has stated:

“If we failed to do one thing in this film, and we failed to do many things, it was to take people out of their everyday lives. It’s not a scary scare movie but a queasy scare movie and I think people resent that.”

Se7en (1995)



Fincher then went on to direct Se7en. With regards to how he selected this particular project, Fincher has commented:

“I got a script by a guy who was kind of in my world, and thinking about films the same way I was, and revered the same kinds of movie that I revered – Andy Walker, who had written a script called Seven. He couldn’t get it made and had rewritten it 13 times in order to make it more “likeable”. So this script was floating around… So I read it, and got to the end, with the head in the box, and I called him and said, “This is fantastic, this is so great because I had thought it was a police procedural; now it’s this meditation on evil and how evil gets on you and you can’t get it off.” And he said, “What are you talking about?” And I talked about the whole head-in-the-box thing, she’s been dead for hours and there’s no bullshit chase across town and the guy driving on sidewalks to get to the woman, who’s drawing a bath while the serial killer sneaks in the back window. And he goes, “Oh, they sent you the wrong draft.””

Fincher took forward this older, much better draft, however, and created what is now often now hailed as a masterpiece. To produce a detective piece at this point in his career is not what is unusual about Fincher’s choice for a second film (many directors tackle the genre at some point); it is instead Fincher’s balls to craft something that is so against Hollywood and it’s typified happy-ending mode (and somehow managing to get away with it), which ultimately gave the audience a more truthful and deeper tale.

The Game (1997)



Producer Steve Golin bought the script for The Game from MGM (it originally being attached to Jonathan Mostow to direct, with Kyle McLachlan and Bridget Fonda in the lead roles) and gave it to Fincher in the hopes that he would direct. Like with Se7en, then, this is Fincher’s ‘choice’ only in the respect that he spotted a great project when it was dumped in front of him and had the sense to snap it up quickly.

This film explores deep seated psychological issues (within its protagonist), holds anarchistic tendencies as a positive trait, and has its protagonist’s entire world and outlook turned upside down and altered by the end of the film – all themes that we would see repeated in Fight Club.

Anarchic themes that are anti-establishment and anti-material possessions (Nicholas Van Outen – this film’s protagonist – is work and money obsessed at the start, and is turned around on this by the end; Fight Club’s Tyler Durden infamously holds the opinion of “The things you own end up owning you”) seem like they needed to be compulsory factors in scripts in order for Fincher to take them on. Se7en was anarchistic in its totality, due to its subversive and rebellious ending. It is fair to say, then, that these themes were a driving force in Fincher’s career at this point, regarding what he is trying to portray to audiences through the medium of film.

Dealing with such controversial themes in such an open manner is a dangerous thing for a director to do; if you continually go against the grain and try to make films that all the Hollywood big-wigs, with their condensed data on what the public likes, say “will not work”, you are risking your projects not being made at all, and we are lucky that Fincher made a big enough name for himself before he was snuffed out completely for his diversity and daring.

Fight Club (1999)



Next arrived Fincher’s true tour de force, Fight Club, adapted from popular cult novelist Chuck Palahniuk’s excellent book of the same name. Fincher has commented:

“The book [is] as good as it gets – I nearly pissed myself, I was laughing so hard when I read it. The guy who became my agent, Josh Donen, who was trying to buy the book with me, had told me to read it. I was like, “I don’t read books, and I’m in the middle of postproduction on The Game,” but he said, “You have to read it tonight.” So I did, and I called him back and said, “We gotta buy this.” And he said, “You waited too long. Fox bought it. But go in and meet with Laura Ziskin.” So I did and I told her, “I don’t want to make the $3m version of this; I want to crash planes, I want to blow up buildings and I want to do the thing that Hollywood really shouldn’t do, material like this.””

This final statement again reveals Fincher’s inherent anarchic desire to make films that work against Hollywood’s typical modes. And this is certainly Fincher’s most anarchistic piece to date; when it was released, concerns arose from government types that it might hold too much capacity to sway young minds in the audience towards this way of thinking; becoming anti-establishment and destructive based upon the newly realised discontent with their lives and disillusionment (and indeed, more Fight Club’s were started, to make people feel more alive, and who knows, perhaps a few Project Mayhem’s also).

With regards to his selection of this piece, this is another instance where a great script (or here, book) was dumped on Fincher’s desk and where he retained the sense to snatch the project up. Palahniuk’s book being a work that defines the angst and disillusionment of a generation, it was a project that any director simply shouldn’t ignore, and we should be thankful that Fincher got his grasp on it and portrayed it as it was meant to be, before another director took it and censored the life out of it, trying to conform to Hollywood’s rules.

Panic Room (2002)



After a considerable gap of time, Fincher made Panic Room. This was Fincher’s most conventional film up to this point and thus marks the biggest major step in another direction in Fincher’s career.

One online reviewer, after seeing the film, wrote ‘With the exception of how well the cast holds the film together, there’s nothing to it. There is no edge, no question, nothing left unsaid. Frankly, Panic Room has all of us Fincher fans a little concerned… But I shouldn’t speak too soon. Fincher is full of surprises.’ The film certainly lacks the controversial elements, anarchic outlook and exploration of deep themes that his previous efforts held, and it was not as well received by critics as his last three films. That is not to say that it is a disaster, however; in terms of suspense and the way in which it is shot, it is quite an accomplished feature.

Allegedly, Fincher chose to make Panic Room (a script by David Koepp) after Fight Club, because the latter was filmed across 150 different locations and the director sought a break (filming Panic Room in a self-contained location).

Zodiac (2007)



Next came Fincher’s return to the detective crime genre (explored previously with Se7en) and also a return to Fincher directing subject matter adapted from a book (or several books in this case). It was also the first of Fincher’s films to be shot digitally.

Being originally set to direct The Black Dahlia (a project later filmed by Brian De Palma), Fincher seemed already set to make a return to the crime genre before he agreed to take on Zodiac. He was given James Vanderbilt’s screenplay late in 2003, and Fincher was drawn to the story because he had spent much of his childhood in San Anselmo in Marin County during the initial Zodiac murders. Fincher has commented:

“I remember coming home and saying the highway patrol had been following our school buses for a couple weeks now. And my dad, who worked from home, and who was very dry, not one to soft-pedal things, turned slowly in his chair and said: ‘Oh yeah. There’s a serial killer who has killed four or five people, who calls himself Zodiac, who’s threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus, and then shoot the children as they come off the bus.’”

Some speculate that for Fincher as a young boy, the killer “was the ultimate bogeyman.” The director was also drawn to the unresolved ending of Vanderbilt’s screenplay because it felt true to real life where cases are not always solved; the true portrayal of stories being something that we know Fincher always looks for.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)



Here, Fincher turned to a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He commented:

“I read the first draft that was deemed unfilmable. And over the years, I heard about who had it and who was going to try next. I read Eric Roth’s draft in 2001/2002.” It was that particular draft that drew him in; as to why, he commented “I just thought the final image of a 74-year-old woman holding a seven-month-old baby and helping him through death, I just thought it was a beautiful way to end a love story.”

And:

“I think Terry Gilliam looked at it earlier. There are just so many layers of complexity in terms of the period, the evolution of the background, that once you give up the idea of five or six people playing this one person, and you can kind of focus on one actor – that’s what made it work for me. I know Brad will be able to describe this arc, he’ll be able to figure this guy out, and I just have to create a world for him to do that in. The first time I read it, when I read Robin [Swicord]‘s first draft of it in 1991-92, I think I was thinking of it then in terms of five or six actors, and it made my head hurt.”

In 2005 Fincher negotiated a deal with co-financers Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures to direct Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button back to back.
This was Fincher’s first non-realism film since Alien 3 (that being SF and this piece being fantasy). With both Zodiac and this film, we witnessed him return to his routes in a way, through the return to crime and non-realism.

Both Zodiac and this film were highly lauded by critics and showed Panic Room to be only a temporary affliction in the quality of this director’s work.


The Social Network (2010)



And so we arrive at Fincher’s The Social Network, released this Friday 15th October in the UK. When many first heard the notion that a film about facebook was being made, they (especially those who didn’t know about the legal case) were rightly sceptical; what merit could come of a film about the social network made for superficial ‘status updates’ and pointless games? As soon as the news arrived that Fincher was attached to the project though, and the arriving trailers showed it was being handled in a mature manner, assumptions quickly fell away and opinions changed.

This is a very odd choice for Fincher to select. In one respect, it seems like yet another step in an entirely new direction for him, but there is also a similarity with Zodiac here with Fincher choosing to film a true story (and subsequently having to decide how much fact and how much fiction to use).


The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)



With his upcoming film after The Social Network, Fincher again surprises us with an unusual choice. He is doing what you generally find only small time directors do; he is directing the Hollywood remake of a successful, critically acclaimed foreign film: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Remakes of foreign successes are seen by most to be sacrilege, since they rarely work (or at least are almost always worse than the original) and they are a clear example of Hollywood’s resistance to back originality and its tendency to simply repackage successful ideas to make a profit.

Perhaps Fincher’s version is set to be more of a different interpretation of the book it was adapted from, though. Much like how Matt Reeves claims his Let Me In is less of a remake and more of an alternative interpretation of the novel. We’ll have to just wait and see what he does with it. No doubt it will be very different to Niels Arden Oplev’s version. One thing is for sure; this is yet another example of Fincher be risky with the projects he chooses to undertake, a quality, let us hope, that he always retains.

(This news feature was written by me for the site www.thefilmpilgrim.com, on which it can also be found)

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