The Best Movies Never Made

David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a critical and box office success, grossing about $232 million and landing star Rooney Mara an Oscar nomination. After the movie was released in 2011, Fincher revealed that he had plans to film the two sequels that made up the rest of the trilogy back-to-back. The sequels were delayed many times since, with Fincher citing script revisions as the main reason. Years later, after Fincher had left the project, Mara expressed in several interviews (and leaked e-mails) that she would be interesting in reprising her role but Sony eventually decided to reboot the franchise with Fede Alvarez and Claire Foy instead.

Another David Fincher / Rooney Mara project that sadly also got cancelled was HBO’s Utopia. Weeks before production was set to start, HBO pulled the plug on the Gillian Flynn-scripted series due to budget concerns; HBO wasn’t willing to shell out the $9 million budget Fincher was asking for. HBO revived the series in 2018 with the same scripts but different directors and Sasha Lane replacing Mara in the lead role. The show, which centers around a manuscript that predicts some of the world’s worst disasters, is set to debut later this year.