Seven's bleak ending survived only because Fincher got the wrong script
Producers forced writer Andrew Kevin Walker to replace the brutal ending of his thriller Seven with something more conventional. Then David Fincher was accidentally sent the original draft. He agreed to direct only if that ending stayed, and the downbeat finale became one of the most talked-about twists in film history.
Walker moved from suburban Pennsylvania to New York in 1986, just as crime and drug abuse were climbing, and found the shift jarring. While working at Tower Records in 1991 he began a spec script set in an unnamed, gloomy city modelled on that period, and he later said he probably would not have written it without living there. He wanted audiences to leave feeling drained, without a neat explanation for evil.
An Italian company, Penta Film, optioned the script, paying Walker the minimum guild fee, enough for him to quit his job and move to Los Angeles. Its chosen director, Jeremiah Chechik, fresh from a Christmas Vacation comedy, demanded a gentler conclusion set in a burning church. When Penta ran into money trouble, producer Arnold Kopelson took the rights to New Line Cinema. Phil Joanou turned the job down as too bleak. Fincher, trying to rebuild his reputation after the troubled Alien 3, received Walker's first version by mistake.
The plot pairs Morgan Freeman's weary detective Somerset, a week from retirement, with Brad Pitt's hot-headed newcomer Mills as they hunt a killer staging murders around the seven deadly sins. Kevin Spacey plays the killer, known only as John Doe, and Gwyneth Paltrow plays Mills's lonely wife. Filming ran in Los Angeles from December 1994 to March 1995 on a budget of roughly $33 to $34 million.
Test screenings were lukewarm and the violent material made the studio nervous, but the film took $327 million worldwide, the seventh-highest total of that year. It relaunched Fincher's career and helped Pitt graduate from pin-up roles to serious drama. Its jittery opening titles, showing the killer at work on his notebooks, revived interest in title design, and its reputation has only grown since.
Source: Seven (1995 film)
