Over the course of his 19 year career, David Fincher has never worked with the same writer twice. From Jim Uhls on Fight Club to Aaron Sorkin on The Social Network, he's created a filmmography with a great deal of variety, but also with his signature. This was going to continue with 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, as the script was written by Scott Z. BUrns, Michael Chabon, Justin Marks, Bill Marsilii and Randall Wallace, none of whom Fincher has worked with before. But now a new writer, one from very early in the director's career, is coming back to collaborate with Fincher again.
Deadline has learned that Andrew Kevin Walker, who is best known for writing the 1995 serial killer classic Se7en, has signed on to "work on" the script for David Fincher's adaptation of the classic Jules Verne novel. When I recently spoke with Scott Z. Burns, he told me that the film that is being developed will bear little resemblance to the source material. Instead, the project will focus more on the three central characters: Captain Nemo, French marine biologist Professor Pierre Aronnax, and master harpoonist Ned Land. In addition to Se7en, Walker's other credits include Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, 8MM and, most recently, 2010's The Wolfman.
Obviously it is unknown at this point how the new writers draft will differ from the script that already exists. What is interesting is that Walker typically works on darker material - will 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea continue that trend? We'll just have to wait and see.
