David Fincher is a reasonably acclaimed director who could probably get any kind of gig he wants, but lately he’s been trying to make it very clearly that he absolutely does not want some gigs. Specifically, Fincher doesn’t want to make Marvel or Star Wars movies, telling The Financial Times recently (via Collider) that the Marvel Studios model can be too limiting for a some filmmakers. Then, an interview with Empire, he revealed that he was actually considered for a Star Wars movie before making it clear that he wasn’t interested.
Fincher says that he talked to Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy about directing one of the new Star Wars movies, and while he conceded that it’d be “a plum assignment,” he seems to have concluded that the pressure of making a Star Wars would be too much. He says he can’t tell if it’d be worse to be George Lucas on the set of the first movie “where everyone’s making fun” because of how weird it all is, or to have to develop the “intestinal fortitude” in order to follow through on the success of The Force Awakens. On the one hand, he says “you have to endure the withering abuse of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher,” and on the other “you have to live up to a billion or a billion-five.” That’s in addition to the fact that making a Star Wars movie will take up “two years of your life, 14 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Given what happened to Phil Lord and Chris Miller, Josh Trank, and Colin Trevorrow, though, it’s probably good that Fincher knew Star Wars wasn’t for him ahead of time.