Showrunner and director, David Fincher (Se7en, Panic Room), of Netflix’s crime procedural Mindhunter explains why he thinks the popular series was canceled by Netflix.
According to a post on X from FincherAnalyst (translated from Première magazine) Fincher says unlike his other series, House of Cards, Mindhunter wasn’t derivative of other shows of its type, and for the mega-streamer, continuing with it was a crapshoot.
“Maybe House of Cards wasn’t a huge risk, but Mindhunter was,” the post says. “A procedural on behavioral sciences that would be neither X-Files, nor CSI, nor Criminal Minds, but would function as the portrait of a guy who loses his virginity in the world of psychosexual sadists? We couldn’t complete the trajectory, but it was a gamble. An expensive series, too. Very expensive. We went as far as we could until someone finally said to us, ‘It makes no sense to produce this series like this, unless you can reduce the budget, or make it more pop, so that more people will watch it.’”
Mindhunter starred Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany and Anna Torv. Their characters worked as agents at the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in the organization’s training division. Because of the nature of the show, Netflix wanted to change some aspects of it. But Fincher refused therefore leaving Netflix with no other option but to cancel it.
“I always take a slight step aside from what is expected of me. Otherwise, I’m not interested,” Fincher shared. “At a test screening of Seven, in the second of silence just before the lights came back on, while everyone was gasping for air, I caught the producer cursing at me, ‘This guy has taken a great thriller and made it into a foreign film!’”
Mindhunter’s cancellation was confirmed almost a year ago to the day even after reports it might get a third chapter. Nevertheless, Fincher isn’t sweating it.
“I’m very proud of the first two seasons. But it’s a very expensive show and, in the eyes of Netflix, we didn’t attract enough of an audience to justify such an investment [for Season 3],” he said according to Hypebeast.