4. Se7en 2: Psychic Somerset Investigates
Se7en is still probably David Fincher's best and most accomplished filmmaking feat: set over the course of a week, the movie follows Detectives Somerset and Mills, as played by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt respectively, as they attempt to track down a notorious serial killer who is using the seven deadly sins as his M.O. By the end of the movie, Gwyneth Paltrow's head turns up in a box, Brad Pitt ends going insane, and Morgan Freeman gets to quietly lament about how shitty the world is. Done. Not a single person who watched
Se7en in the theatre ever turned to their friend and said, "Woah, I can't wait for the sequel to this." That simply did not occur. Nobody thought it necessary, because it wasn't. And yet one Hollywood executive turned to his buddy and whispered, "How can we make another one of these?" The answer lay in speculative screenplay
Solace, which concerned a plot about a psychic police detective, and was reportedly re-written to feature Freeman's Somerset character. When approached with the idea of tackling a
Se7en sequel, David Fincher said that he would rather stub cigarettes out in his own eyes, which was presumably a sinister enough notion to shut down this bizarre sequel idea forever.