David Fincher took on the digital revolution this year in his film 'The Social Network,' but for his next guaranteed blockbuster, the American remake of 'Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,' he's going a little bit old school.
Fincher spoke with the film site Collider to discuss how he approached the technology and mystery aspects of the hit Swedish book and film series, of which he got the opportunity to make with English-speaking actors.
"Well you get asked these questions, you know we're going through this with Dragon Tattoo now, what year does it take place in? Well the books are delivered in 2004, so he's probably thinking in terms of 2003, it's not published until 2005, 2007 is the iPhone, so all those apps that would be available to the iPhone are probably something that Salander would have access to 'cause she's a bit of a Mac junkie. So you kind of go, 'Well where do we draw the line?' So we just said, look everything has to be pre-iPhone technology, because otherwise they would be sitting there going 'Well we just go over here.' They would have a compass; they would be able to tell what the weather was like. So there's all that stuff, you just have to make a decision [that's] fairly arbitrary, basically everything in the movie is pre-iPhone."
With the books being about similar subject matter to some of his other films, Fincher was actually a little bit hesitant to helm the movies, having forged a career with 'Seven,' and 'Zodiac.' Then, he took a look at the opportunity from a wider perspective.
"Dragon Tattoo came along and I was like "Awww f**k man you cannot make another serial killer movie...you've got to fucking stop this.' And it wasn't really even...it was Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin to an extent but mostly from the studio side that they were committed to this idea that there could be...that there was a hope that you could do a franchise movie for adults. And I thought 'f**k man, I've been working my ass off for twenty years, hoping that somebody would say something like this.' And I just thought, you get an opportunity to hopefully pave the way for something like that to happen...you know, that would be a great thing."
Of course, Fincher did take the opportunity, and the first of the Stieg Larsson-based films, starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig, comes out in December of this new year.
For much more of the interview, click over to Collider.com.