David Finch­er returns to cin­e­mas with first images from Mank

At last, our long nation­al night­mare of not hav­ing any new David Finch­er movies is over. The esteemed film­mak­er has spent six years tra­vers­ing the wilds of online TV, helm­ing House of Cards and then Mind­hunter for his adop­tive over­lords at Net­flix, but their benev­o­lence will soon end this inter­minable Finch­er drought at the cinema.

Today brings our first glimpse at his grand return, Mank, a dra­ma chron­i­cling the ten­sions between Orson Welles and Her­man J Mankiewicz dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of Cit­i­zen Kane. And even in razor-sharp dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy, Old Hol­ly­wood has nev­er looked quite so lustrous.

We see Gary Old­man as Mankiewicz, the man who authored the screen­play that would become Welles’ mas­ter­piece. Here, he strides through a metic­u­lous­ly recre­at­ed set from an ear­li­er era of film production.

Aman­da Seyfried has an air of the clas­si­cal about her looks – big eyes, flax­en hair – mak­ing her a per­fect fit for Mar­i­on Davies, actress and the long­time mis­tress of Ran­dolph Hearst (the famed inspi­ra­tion for Char­lie Kane). Many spec­u­lat­ed that the sec­ond wife char­ac­ter from the film was based on her, a charge that Welles denied for years afterward.

While the choice to shoot this milieu, so close­ly iden­ti­fied with the grain of cel­lu­loid, in clean high-def­i­n­i­tion dig­i­tal could ruf­fle some feath­ers. But the still below, of mag­ic-hour sun pour­ing in over a dusty loca­tion shoot, sug­gests that long­time advo­cate of dig­i­tal tex­tures Finch­er knows what he’s doing.

Below, we see Arliss Howard as Louis B May­er, one of the most influ­en­tial stu­dio boss­es of the era. He’s seen here ges­tic­u­lat­ing emphat­i­cal­ly, prob­a­bly talk­ing about bud­gets or box-office num­bers or whether or not some kid has it.

Lily Collins por­trays Rita Alexan­der, the nurse who accom­pa­nied Mankiewicz as he drew up the script while dry­ing out at the North Verde Ranch. Her sup­port and even­tu­al rec­ol­lec­tions of the time fig­ured promi­nent­ly into the debate over the script’s cre­ative parent­age that broke out between Welles and Mankiewicz.

And there we have it, the tow­er­ing screen­play under its orig­i­nal title of Amer­i­can. (How’s that for chutz­pah?) It’s rem­i­nis­cent of The Social Net­work of Fight Club, Fincher’s oth­er films about pairs of men that hap­pen onto some­thing of great val­ue and then must bat­tle for con­trol over it.

A release date still has yet to be set, though Net­flix promis­es ​“Fall 2020” as a dead­line. But when it does, cinephiles far and wide will let you know.