One of the rare examples of an abandoned Fincher project being picked up by another director, apparently he'd fancied making an epic true-life crime story a good half-decade before he eventually pulled that off (to brilliant fashion) with 2007's Zodiac. Like that film, The Black Dahlia was to be adapted from a bestselling book. Unlike Zodiac, The Black Dahlia was to be a five-hour $80 million miniseries featuring movie stars, not unlike True Detective ended up being. It would also have seen Fincher working closely with the book's author, James Ellroy. That guy knows his grim Hollywood murder stories. Eventually Fincher managed to get talked down to the much more reasonable (and studio-friendly) prospect of a film instead of a TV series, with Mark Wahlberg attached for the role of the police detective investigating the infamously unsolved case the Zodiac parallels coming up there again. Wahlberg eventually dropped out in favour of starring in that Italian Job remake, which might not have been as disastrous as a decision as it initially seems. The Black Dahlia eventually made it to cinemas in 2006 with Brian De Palma in the director's chair, starring Josh Hartnett and Scarlett Johansson. It was bloody awful.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
