Image: Wikimedia Commons. Photo taken by Elen Nivrae.

A long time ago, David Fincher was in the running to direct The Force Awakens, a job that eventually went to JJ Abrams. As it turns out, Fincher avoided the galaxy far, far away for a good reason.


“I can’t imagine the kind of intestinal fortitude one has to have,” Fincher told Empire on the Empire Film Podcast. “That’s a whole other level. One is that you have to endure the withering abuse of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, and the other is you have to live up to a billion or a billion-five, and that becomes its own kind of pressure.”

While Fincher is no stranger to big-budget filmmaking (most recently, he’s been attached to Brad Pitt’s World War Z sequel), that’s a level even he isn’t quite willing to take on. He’s not exactly mistaken, either, considering that two sets of directors have been fired from the five film projects so far undertaken. Not killer odds, really.


“You’d have to really clear you head, I think,” he continued. “You’d have to really be sure this is what you wanted to do because either way it’s two years of your life, 14 hours a day, seven days a week.”

JJ Abrams is apparently really convinced.

[Empire, via Entertainment Weekly]