Revisiting David Fincher’s 3 Oscar nominations in honor of ‘The Killer’
David Fincher has worked in film for over three decades, after beginning his career directing commercials and music videos. Since 1992, he has directed 12 features, which have amassed a total of 40 Academy Award nominations, including ones for actors Brad Pitt, Taraji P. Henson, Jesse Eisenberg, Rooney Mara, Rosamund Pike, Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried. In honor of his recent Netflix thriller “The Killer,” which premiered on the streaming service November 10 after a limited theatrical release, let’s take a closer look at his three individual Oscar nominations, all for Best Director.
After getting single nominations here and there for the first half of his filmography, Fincher exploded on the Oscar scene in 2009 with “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008), a romantic fantasy based on the 1922 F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, starring Pitt, Henson and Cate Blanchett, about a man who ages backwards. With directing noms at the Golden Globe, Critics Choice, Directors Guild of America and BAFTA Awards, Fincher was one of the film’s leading 13 nominations at the Oscars. He would lose all to Danny Boyle in a sweep for “Slumdog Millionaire,” but the movie won three Oscars that night with Best Production Design (Donald Graham Burt and Victor J. Zolfo), Best Makeup (Greg Cannom) and Best Visual Effects (Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton, and Craig Barron).
Fincher’s closest shot at an Oscar trophy came two years later with “The Social Network” (2010), considered one of his best works, about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook, based on the 2009 book “The Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezrich. Early in the awards circuit, it seemed that the biopic was a frontrunner for the top awards, winning Best Director for Fincher and Best Film at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, but it later got unseated at all of the guild awards by “The King’s Speech.”
Even though Fincher had some hope to claim Best Director after winning the BAFTA in a surprise against the British directing frontrunner Tom Hooper, he came up short against him at the Oscars for “The King’s Speech,” which ended up winning Best Picture. However, “The Social Network” received eight Oscar nominations, winning Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin), Best Editing (Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall) and Best Score (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), and is cited as one of the best films of the decade and 21st century.
A decade later, Fincher returned with the black-and-white biopic “Mank” (2020), going back into cinema history and exploring Herman J. Mankiewicz and the making of the classic 1941 film “Citizen Kane,” with a screenplay written by his late father, Jack Fincher. Starring Oldman as the titular Oscar-winning screenwriter, “Mank” once again led the Oscar nominations in 2021 with 10, and Fincher achieved every directing precursor notice leading up to the big night. He was bested by Chloe Zhao for “Nomadland,” but as with his previous films, “Mank” did not walk away empty-handed at the Oscars as it won Best Production Design (Burt and Jan Pascale) and Best Cinematography (Erik Messerschmidt) in a surprise over “Nomadland.”
Now Fincher returns this year with a more subdued film, “The Killer,” an action thriller based on the French graphic novel series by Alexis “Matz” Nolent. Starring Michael Fassbender as the anonymous assassin, the movie is divided into six chapters and fits his cinematic and visual style and themes as well as his immense attention to detail. Even though at the moment “The Killer” is being kept under the radar, Fincher is a widely respected director with much prestige, and all of his films since “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” have received major Oscar nominations, so it is one to look out for and it could turn up in various categories as the season goes on, including Best Director.
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