Mindhunter producer reveals ultimatum behind Season 3 cancellation
NetflixMindhunter creator David Fincher has revealed the sudden death ultimatum that caused the show’s Season 3 to be canceled.
Netflix has produced a ton of incredibly amazing original content over the years, but they haven’t been able to replicate the prestige behind their 2017 series Mindhunter.
Starring Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany, Mindhunter follows the beginnings of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit within the Training Division and how the unit develops techniques to hunt and catch different serial killers.
Despite being critically acclaimed during its two-season run, the show’s third season never saw the light of day and just recently the series’ creator David Fincher has revealed the ultimatum that caused Season 3 to be canceled by Netflix.
Fincher explains why Mindhunter Season 3 never came to be
The executive producer of Mindhunter recently spoke to Première Magazine where he was asked about his collaboration with Netflix and how the two were getting along since the platform canceled his show.
In the translation from French to English, Fincher explained, “Maybe House of Cards wasn’t a huge risk, but Mindhunter was. 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.'”
He continued stating, “We did not want to change our approach so, respectfully, they told us that they were drawing a line under it. That’s it: I always take a slight step aside from what is expected of me. Otherwise, I’m not interested. 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!'”
Though there is no concrete figure on Mindhunter’s budget per episode, most Netflix shows can cost upwards of $15 million per episode, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the series cost almost that amount to make.
This wasn’t the first time Fincher has been vocal about Netflix’s decision to cancel Mindhunter due to its cost, but it doesn’t seem like he holds any real ill will towards the company as he told Le Journal du Dimanche, “I’m very proud of the first two seasons, but it’s a particularly expensive series and, in the eyes of Netflix, we haven’t attracted a large enough audience to justify such an investment. I don’t blame them, they took risks to launch the series.”