By David Fincher is bar none one of my favorite modern directors. His movies and shows are always filled with a darkness that lurks just beneath the surface and threatens to swallow you whole if you don’t keep your guard up. While I’ve loved his television work on Mindhunter and to a lesser extent due to the unfortunate association of Kevin Spacey House of Cards, his absence in the movie world has been noticeable ever since Gone Girl released in 2014.
Continuing their trend of buying up big name productions for their ever growing platform, Netflix is set to release Fincher’s return to the movie world with Mank, coming to select theaters in November, but more importantly coming to their platform on December 4.
Centered around the struggle between screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles over the production and release of Welles’ historic Citizen Kane, Mank is a movie that is over 20 years in the making. Featuring a script originally written by Fincher’s late father Jack in the 1990’s, there’s a bit of poetic beauty in a movie about an almost forgotten screenwriter being released nearly two decades after the death of the writer.
Starring Gary Oldman as the titular Mankiewicz, Mank features an all-star cast including Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, and Tom Burke. Also exciting for the soundtrack nerds like me is the return of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for the score, although I have questions about how they will adapt to a black and white film set in 1930’s Los Angeles.
