Lin and Fincher apparently locked horns over money during the production of The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth, the first of Fincher’s three Netflix films in which he worked directly with Lin. “One knowledgeable source says the A-list director had had enough with Lin’s budgetary shackles,” the report said. No doubt the director’s exacting tendencies clashed with Lin’s penny-pinching, which is said to be a far cry from the era of Scott Stuber, Lin’s predecessor, who was reportedly far more open-handed with filmmakers and high-profile actors.
What may save Lin despite this Fincher rift, Page Six notes, is Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos’ hopes of finally scoring Netflix a Best Picture Oscar, with Cliff Booth being the one of the streamer’s two contenders whose potential success Lin can take credit for. (The other is Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra, which will see an extended theatrical window during awards season.) Another feather in Lin’s cap is having spared Netflix Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger, both of which proved to be among this year’s biggest box-office bombs, with Digger reportedly heading into a deficit of over $245 million. Ironically, Page Six has it that former Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, who greenlit both The Bride! and Digger at WB, could be vying for Lin’s job should the axe fall, with Abdy said to have met with Sarandos before the Warner Bros.-Paramount Skydance merger resulted in her firing.
Fincher, whose original Netflix series House Of Cards legitimized the streamer as a production heavyweight, decided not to renew his exclusive four-year deal in late September. The partnership produced two features, the Herman J. Mankiewicz biopic Mank (2020) and the Michael Fassbender thriller The Killer (2023), with Cliff Booth very well proving to be his last when the deal expires next year.
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