DAVID FINCHER

KEY FACTSBorn August 28th 1962American Film Director, Film producer, Television Director and Music Video Director.Nominated: Academy Award for Best Director (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 2008 and The Social Network 2010)Won: Golden Globe Award for Best Director and BAFTA Award for Best DirectionHe is also known for having directed the psychological thrillers Seven (1995), Fight Club (1999), the mystery thrillers Zodiac (2007) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and Gone Girl (2014), as well as being pivotal in the creation of the critically acclaimed U.S. television series House of Cards.

EARLY LIFE Born in Denver, Colorado to a mental health nurse from South Dakota who worked in drug addiction programs, and Howard Kelly Fincher, an author from Oklahoma who worked as a reporter and a bureau chief for Life. From a young age Fincher knew that he wanted to go into Film Making. During high school he directed plays and designed sets and lighting after school. He was a non-union projectionist at a second-run movie theatre, production assistant at the local television news station KOBI in Medford, Oregon, and took on other odd jobs such as fry cook, busboy, and dishwasher.Fincher began his film making career at just eight years old with an 8mm camera.

INFLUENCESIn an interview with Empire magazine in 2008, Fincher named the following films as his favourites: Alien (1979), All That Jazz (1979), All the President's Men (1976), American Graffiti (1973), Being There (1979), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Cabaret (1972), Chinatown (1974), Citizen Kane (1941), Days of Heaven (1978), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 8½ (1963), The Exorcist (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Graduate (1967), Jaws (1975), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Mad Max 2 (1981), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), Paper Moon (1973), Rear Window (1954), Taxi Driver (1976), The Terminator (1984), The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), and Zelig (1983).

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE

TRADEMARK • [single frame insert] His movies often features several single frames that

flash on the screen in the middle of a scene (Fight Club (1999)).• His films often end in a suicide, either attempted or successful• His films often have low-key lighting with green or blue tinted colour

temperature.• Wide shots• Downbeat endings• Stationary shot, unfocused background with character walking into focus• Often displays end credits as slide shows (Fight Club, Zodiac, The

Curious Case of Benjamin Button) or scrolling downward (Se7en) rather than the traditional upward scroll

• [Silhouettes] Frequently has characters in the shadows where you cannot make out their face (Kevin Spacey in Se7en (1995) and Brad Pitt in Fight Club (1999)).

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (2008)

Box Office

Budget: $150,000,000 (estimated)Opening Weekend: $26,853,816 (USA) (26 December 2008)Gross: $127,490,802 (USA) (17 April 2009)

Tells the story of Benjamin Button, a man who starts aging backwards with bizarre consequences.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010)

On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history... but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications.

From director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin comes The Social Network, a film that proves you don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.

The film is produced by Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca, and Ceán Chaffin and based on the book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich.

Box OfficeBudget: $40,000,000 (estimated)Opening Weekend: $22,445,653 (USA) (2 October 2010)Gross: $96,917,897 (USA) (25 February 2011)

GONE GIRL (2014)

Box OfficeBudget: $61,000,000 (estimated)Opening Weekend: $37,513,109 (USA) (3 October 2014)Gross: $167,735,396 (USA) (6 February 2015)

With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.