Fincher’s Torso done?

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON has already made over $100 million. It was nominated for 13 Academy Awards yesterday. David Fincher, was among those 12 nominations for Best Director. Fincher’s next, TORSO, would have teamed him with Matt Damon, Casey Affleck and Rachel McAdams. And it STILL couldn’t get a greenlight. Paramount, the same studio that just had so much success with Fincher on BUTTON, had the rights to TORSO since 2006 but would not give the project a greenlight and let their option lapse on the film. The studio could have purchased the rights to the project outright but they declined to do so. Instead TORSO, which follows the post-Capone days of Eliot Ness, is in limbo. Paramount owns the right to the current shooting script (by Ehren Kruger) that they developed. But the motion picture rights have transferred to Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Andreyko who wrote the graphic novel the film would be based on. So Fincher can’t use the script because it’s owned by Paramount but Paramount can’t develop the project because the rights have reverted to the authors (who are with Fincher)… The Hollywood Reporter notes that Paramount is “unlikely to let the project slip through its fingers,” though that doesn’t mean it will get made any time soon.

UPDATE – An interesting sidenote courtesy of the LA Times who today ran an article about how BENJAMIN BUTTON, despite all its successes, is struggling to make a profit. They said BUTTON would need to gross over $300 million worldwide just to break even and so far it’s only at about $125 million. The Oscar bump would help but keep in mind they’re spending another $10 million just on campaigning for awards (on top of the existing $135 million marketing budget). You can read all about it here.