David Fincher returns with his first film since 2014’s Gone Girl and this time he’s headed back to 1930s Hollywood with Mank. Netflix has unveiled the first teaser trailer for the film and it’s bound to be one of the most talked-about films of the year.
The film follows the 1930s Hollywood story about Herman J. Mankiewicz, the screenwriter who wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane – although director Orson Welles later tried to take most of the credit, and various different accounts of what really happened have muddied the waters a bit. Gary Oldman plays Mankiewicz, leading a cast that includes Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Tom Burke, and more.
Mank is bound to be a very personal project for Fincher since his father Jack Fincher penned the screenplay. The director has also been hoping to make this movie since at least 1997 and apparently he wanted his Se7en actor, Kevin Spacey, as Mankiewicz and Panic Room‘s Jodie Foster as Marion Davies. Obviously, that didn’t happen. But Fincher never gave up on the idea, and now he’s finally made it. Back in 2009, the director had this to say about the project:
“It was too expensive. Because if you’re going to make a Hollywood insider movie—it’s nothing to do with Hollywood really, it’s Hollywood in the late thirties, early forties—you’ve got to make it really cheaply. We had a chance to make the movie for, like, $13 million, back in 1998 and, um, [guiltily] I wanted to make it in black and white. [Laughs] And that fucked up all those home video and video sellthrough and cable deals. I haven’t read it in a while. I probably should.”
Mank will open in select theaters in November before arriving on Netflix on December 4.
