According to Deadline, Netflix has worked out a deal to get David Fincher and Robert Towne to team up on a pilot script for a prequel to Chinatown. The plan for the series, if it gets that far, is for it to focus on a young Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson in the film) as he does various Chinatown-esque things without catching up to or disrupting the actual events of Chinatown. Deadline says “the hope” is that Fincher will stick around to direct the pilot, but he doesn’t have a deal for that yet. Either way, this continues his relationship with Netflix, which goes all the way back to the days when House Of Cards was a prestigious TV show and not a shameful secret that we’d all rather not talk about. He also made Mindhunter and will direct a Netflix film called Mank about the manking of Citizen Kane with Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried.
As for Towne, he won an Oscar for writing the original Chinatown, which is widely regarded as having one of the all-time great screenplays, so he seems like an appropriate choice for this project. Also, speaking of shameful secrets we’d rather not talk about: Roman Polanski directed Chinatown, and we’re going to go out on a limb and say that he will not be involved with this whatsoever.