Charlize Theron And David Fincher Collab For Netflix Project ‘Mindhunter’
Mad Max: Fury Road’s Charlize Theron has been collaborating with director David Fincher on a particular project for a while now, and it finally looks as if they’ll be able to move forward with it.
Mindhunter is the series in question, based on the thriller Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, written by John Douglas and Mark Olshake. It was originally intended to go to HBO, but the Wrap reports that the project will move forward on Netflix.
Scott Buck, producer on Dexter, Six Feet Under, and now the showrunner of Marvel and Netflix’s Iron Fist, wrote an original script for the last incarnation of the series but is not expected to be part of the Netflix version. Joe Penhallill write the new draft for Mindhunter. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Charlize Theron has held the rights to the book for four years, and House of Cards executive producer David Fincher is set to direct. Theron will be executive producing through her Denver and Delilah banner.
The original book was written in 1996. For years, co-author Douglas was in the pursuit of some of the most notorious serial killers and rapists, working as a profiler for the FBI and developing profiling techniques in order to hunt them down. The book goes behind the scenes of some of Douglas’ highest-profile cases, including the man who hunted prostitutes in Alaska, the Atlanta child murderer, and Seattle’s Green River killer. To hone in his profiling methods, Douglas interviewed a list of infamous serial killers, including Ted Bundy and Charles Mansion. Several book and TV characters have been partially based on him, including Jack Crawford in Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs, Will Graham on the now cancelled Hannibal, and Jason Gideon on Criminal Minds.
Dean Koontz gave a glowing review for the book for the New York Times.
“One feels that Mr. Douglas’s keen eye for crime-scene detail and his powerful inductive reasoning cannot be explained any more than one can explain his murderous quarries’ capacity for merciless savagery. Reading about the many bizarre cases cited in ‘Mindhunter’…one is stunned by the cruelty and evil of some who walk among us. No less disturbing is the eagerness of society to believe that even the worst monsters can be understood and rehabilitated….Mr. Douglas sets out to produce a good true-crime book, but because of his insights and the power of his material, he gives us more ? he leaves us shaken, gripped by a quiet grief for the innocent victims and anguished by the human condition.”
David Fincher recently worked on two series for HBO. One being Video Synchronicity and the other being Utopia, which were both ordered to production, however, they have currently been put on hold.
But Charlize Theron has more going on than just her Mindhunter adaptation. The Academy Award winner is currently filming the thriller The Coldest City, which is set for release in 2016. Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, an undercover MI6 agent sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate a murder and retrieve valuable information. The film also stars X-Men: Apocalypse’s James McAvoy, John Goodman, and Sofia Boutella. David Leitch is directing after stepping away from Keanu Reeves’ John Wick 2.
Charlize Theron has three additional films being released in 2016. The Huntsman Winter’s War — the sequel to 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman — the Sean Penn-directed drama The Last Face with Javier Bardem, and the animated film Kubo and the Two Strings.
[Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for Global Goals]
