Holt McCallany, who plays veteran agent Bill Tench on Mindhunter, says David Fincher is exploring a plan to revive the dormant Netflix drama as a trilogy of two-hour films rather than a third season, telling Screen Rant he met with the director “a few months ago” and left believing “there is a chance” the project will move forward if the scripts satisfy Fincher’s standards. Speaking to CBR, McCallany added that writers are already at work, but warned that “the sun, the moon and the stars” must align for production to begin.
The comments arrive nearly six years after Netflix placed the critically acclaimed but costly series on indefinite hold and released its cast from contractual obligations. Fincher later told Le Journal du Dimanche that the show “didn’t attract enough of an audience to justify such an investment,” effectively declaring it dead in 2023. Industry analysts note that each episode reportedly cost about $10 million, a figure that outpaced viewing metrics in the platform’s internal calculus.
Fincher’s stance appears to be softening as Netflix looks for marquee originals amid intensifying competition. A 2020 statement from the streamer left the door ajar, saying the director “may revisit Mindhunter again in the future,” a five-year horizon that coincides with this week’s disclosures. McCallany told IBTimes UK the mooted films would likewise debut on Netflix, easing distribution hurdles if financing and schedules line up.
Cast availability remains a wild card. Jonathan Groff said in 2021 he would “be there in a second” should Fincher call, but Anna Torv’s post-Last of Us commitments and the expiry of original option agreements add complexity. Fincher, meanwhile, has been linked to a sequel to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, raising questions about when he could devote months to another painstaking production.
Fans who turned the show’s meticulous portrayal of early FBI profiling into a cult phenomenon have greeted the update with guarded optimism; social-media hashtags for #MindhunterMovies spiked after the news broke, echoing past petitions that gathered tens of thousands of signatures. Still, observers caution that the director’s perfectionism—and the budgetary math that derailed season three—could yet stall the comeback. As McCallany put it, “David has to be happy with the scripts,” and that, he admits, “is a big question mark.”