It's no secret that Alien 3 was a troubled production that was less than stellar compared to its predecessors, so much so that David Fincher had actually disowned the film. Still, the director is finally opening up about working on the sequel which he claims was "a truly f--cked up situation."
David Fincher On What He Learned After Working on Alien 3
Alien 3 was released in 1992 but it had actually been in development since 1987. Production was troubled as 20th Century Fox struggled with finding a writer for the screenplay.
David Fincher was eventually brought in to take over after Vincent Ward was fired and Fincher had to work with a script that kept changing. Needless to say, it wasn't fun for the filmmaker who disowned the movie after its release.
It wasn't an ideal directorial debut for Fincher. Still, he admitted during an interview at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival that he learned some important lessons from Alien 3 (via Screenrant).
"I came out of a truly f–ked-up situation and kind of swore that I would never make the same mistake," Fincher said.
"I made a lot of brand new ones, but I’d never start something that didn’t have a script that I didn’t believe in or that I didn’t understand or that I couldn’t articulate to people," he continued.
Fincher added, "And I’d also very much learned that I wanted to make all my own mistakes instead of inheriting them from other people."
It's clear that Fincher learned his lessons so hard that he has since refused to work on a film unless it was with a script he firmly believed in. Naturally, it worked: His follow-up to Alien 3 was the sleeper hit Se7en and virtually all of the movies he has worked on have been successful.
Alien 3 was the third installment in the franchise and it featured the death of Sigourney Weaver's iconic character Ellen Ripley.
Related: James Cameron Confirms Outrageous Aliens Pitch Rumor
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