{"id":317998,"date":"2026-03-02T14:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T14:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/317998\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T14:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T14:37:07","slug":"david-finchers-first-tv-work-was-nearly-the-pilot-for-this-short-lived-crime-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/317998\/","title":{"rendered":"David Fincher&#8217;s First TV Work Was Nearly The Pilot For This Short-Lived Crime Series"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/intro-1772415195.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.tvline.com\/2113037\/david-fincher-first-tv-work-nearly-pilot-crime-series-terriers\/\" data-post-id=\"2113037\" data-slide-num=\"0\" data-slide-title=\"David Fincher's First TV Work Was Nearly The Pilot For This Short-Lived Crime Series: \" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"Henry \" hank=\"\" dolworth=\"\" talking=\"\" to=\"\" britt=\"\" pollack=\"\" in=\"\" terriers=\"\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    FX\/MovieStillsDB<\/p>\n<p>David Fincher is one of the industry&#8217;s most unique creative minds, and at one point, his first work for TV (not counting music videos or commercials) was going to be the pilot for a short-lived but beloved crime series: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvline.com\/2110665\/the-night-agent-creator-lesson-leaned-terriers-tv-failure\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">the FX comedy-drama &#8220;Terriers.&#8221;\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The show followed Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James as, respectively, an ex-cop and his best friend \u2014 a former criminal\u2014 who start an unlicensed private detective operation. It aired for just one season, from early September to early December 2010, and was canceled after being dubbed the lowest-rated first-year drama series for FX at that time.<\/p>\n<p>Despite those statistics, &#8220;Terriers&#8221; was well-received by critics and earned a small but dedicated following. &#8220;[Terriers] felt very ahead of its time,&#8221; co-showrunner and executive producer Shawn Ryan <a href=\"https:\/\/www.televisionacademy.com\/features\/online-originals\/fx-terriers-shawn-ryan-ted-griffin-donal-logue\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">told the Television Academy in a retrospective conversation<\/a>. &#8220;It was a special show and, when it ended, it was a heartbreaking kind of time. There were no creative concerns from FX. The show was what we wanted it to be, just not what the audience was looking for [at the time], at least not a big enough audience. But over the years, I kind of made peace with the fact that the show has slowly found its fans. More fans than detractors.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>During the same chat, Ryan explained that the &#8220;Fight Club&#8221; director was originally in talks to helm the show&#8217;s pilot episode. &#8220;I don&#8217;t want this to come across as any sort of slight toward Craig Brewer, who was our pilot director, but we did have a meeting with Fincher,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                How it all happened&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/how-it-all-happened-1772415196.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.tvline.com\/2113037\/david-fincher-first-tv-work-nearly-pilot-crime-series-terriers\/\" data-post-id=\"2113037\" data-slide-num=\"1\" data-slide-title=\"David Fincher's First TV Work Was Nearly The Pilot For This Short-Lived Crime Series: How it all happened...\" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"Henry \" hank=\"\" dolworth=\"\" and=\"\" britt=\"\" pollack=\"\" talking=\"\" to=\"\" a=\"\" man=\"\" in=\"\" home=\"\" with=\"\" yellow=\"\" walls=\"\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    FX<\/p>\n<p>In the Television Academy interview, Ryan said that Fincher was drawn to the project because of the show&#8217;s resemblance in tone and story to the iconic 1974 film &#8220;Chinatown,&#8221; one of the filmmaker&#8217;s favorites. The &#8220;Se7en&#8221; director was also very excited about the writing. &#8220;He was really, really impressed with [series creator] Ted [Griffin&#8217;s pilot] script, and he was really interested in doing it,&#8221; Ryan continued. &#8220;He was like, &#8216;Listen, the key with this is you can&#8217;t let an actor change a single word of the script. They&#8217;ve just got to say it as written, because the words are just&#8230;&#8217; and I was like, in my mind, &#8216;Oh my God, he&#8217;s going to direct this.'&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>However, a major project ended up causing Fincher to drop the series \u2014 one that is now considered one of the director&#8217;s best. &#8220;Then, right near the end of the meeting, he goes, &#8216;Listen, the only hangup is I have this movie script that Aaron Sorkin has written that I&#8217;m thinking about doing,'&#8221; Ryan concluded. &#8220;That turned out to be &#8216;The Social Network&#8217; \u2014 which, along with &#8216;Inglourious Basterds,&#8217; may be my two favorite films of the last 20 years. So, I&#8217;m ultimately glad that he made that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Fincher went on to direct two episodes of the political drama &#8220;House of Cards,&#8221; seven episodes of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvline.com\/news\/mindhunter-season-3-netflix-cancelled-david-fincher-1234935725\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">the now-dead Netflix true crime drama &#8220;Mindhunter,&#8221;<\/a> and two episodes of &#8220;Love, Death, &amp; Robots.&#8221; There&#8217;s still the potential of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvline.com\/news\/squid-game-english-language-spinoff-david-fincher-1235371849\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">his English-language spinoff of &#8220;Squid Games&#8221;<\/a> coming to fruition at Netflix but not much has been heard on that front since outlets started reporting on it in 2025. Otherwise, he&#8217;s stuck to making movies.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; FX\/MovieStillsDB David Fincher is one of the industry&#8217;s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-317998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}