David Fincher slams ‘Joker,’ plans new series on cancel culture

David Fincher is spending a busy season, promoting his latest Netflix feature Mank - starring Gary Oldman in the lead role. In a recent interview with The Telegraph, the director made news by slamming Todd Phillip’s Joker as a ‘betrayal of the mentally ill.’

 “I don’t think ­anyone would have looked at that material and thought, Yeah, let’s take [Taxi Driver’s] Travis Bickle and [The King of Comedy’s] Rupert Pupkin” — two characters played by Robert De Niro, who also appears in Joker — “and conflate them, then trap him in a betrayal of the mentally ill, and trot it out for a billion dollars,” he said.

The director seems surprised that Phoenix’s Joker took home more than a billion dollars along with a few Oscar wins, including Best Actor for Pheonix. Fincher pointed out the widely different studio reaction to his 1999 film Fight Club from Phillip’s Joker. 

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“Nobody would have thought they had a shot at a giant hit with ‘Joker,’ had ‘The Dark Knight’ not been as massive as it was,” he said.  “The general view afterwards (the early screenings of Fight Club) among the studio types was, ‘Our careers are over.’ The fact we got that film made in 1999 is still, to my mind, a miracle.” 

The director also revealed that he is planning on making a new series on cancel culture – a movement that gained momentum after MeToo took off in recent years.

 “At its heart it’s about how we in modern society measure an apology,” he said. “If you give a truly heartfelt apology and no one believes it, did you even apologize at all? It’s a troubling idea. But we live in troubling times.”