DAVID FINCHER – ALIEN III
David Fincher‘s 1992 feature directorial debut would be another first time project that didn’t exactly go to plan and one which would mark the decline of the influential and much loved Alien franchise. However, his sophomore outing three years later, the crime thriller Se7en, would cement his reputation as a true auteur.
The production started off in trouble as they weren’t working with a completed script and only had five weeks to prepare the film. The director and 20th Century Fox had a less than collaborative relationship during production, with Fincher calling the making of the movie a “baptism by fire.”
Another cause of the movie’s troubled production apart from the crew replacements, excessive re-shoots and a budget that increased from 45 million to 65 million dollars, was the fact that 20th Century Fox was in desperate need of a commercial success.
It got so bad that Fincher was actually denied permission by the film’s producers to shoot a crucial scene in the prison understructure between Ripley and the alien, the director promptly ignored them and shot the scene anyway with the help of Sigourney Weaver.
Fincher bemoaned the studio interference and disowned the film, stating in a later interview “I had to work on it for two years, got fired off it three times and I had to fight for every single thing. No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me”.
