“Mank” is a new film by David Fincher. The film is based on a screenplay by Fincher’s late father, Jack Fincher.
The film is streaming on Netflix. So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about it.
- Mank is a 2020 American biographical drama film about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and his development of the script for Citizen Kane (1941)
- The film is directed by David Fincher
- It is based on a screenplay by his late father Jack Fincher
- The film is produced by Ceán Chaffin, Douglas Urbanski, and Eric Roth
- It stars Gary Oldman in the title role
- Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Arliss Howard, Tom Pelphrey, Sam Troughton, Ferdinand Kingsley, Tuppence Middleton, Tom Burke, Joseph Cross, Jamie McShane, Toby Leonard Moore, Monika Gossmann, and Charles Dance also star
- Fincher’s father Jack wrote the script in the 1990s
- David originally intended to film it after he completed The Game (1997), with Kevin Spacey and Jodie Foster as the leads
- It never came to fruition, and Jack Fincher died in 2003
- Eventually, the project was officially announced in July 2019
- Filming took place around Los Angeles from November 2019 to February 2020
- Mank had a limited theatrical release on November 13, 2020
- It began streaming on Netflix on December 4, 2020
- The film received positive reviews from critics
- They praised the direction, cinematography, production values, and musical score, as well as the performances of Oldman and Seyfried
- Mank was officially announced in July 2019, when David Fincher said he would direct the film, with Gary Oldman set to star
- The screenplay was written by Fincher’s father, Jack Fincher, prior to his death in 2003
- It was originally going to be Fincher’s follow-up to The Game (1997) with Kevin Spacey and Jodie Foster set to star but never came to fruition due to Fincher’s insistence on shooting in black-and-white
- Additional casting was announced in October, with Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Tuppence Middleton, Arliss Howard and Charles Dance among the new cast added
- Fincher reunites with much of his usual filmmaking team, including production designer Donald Graham Burt, editor Kirk Baxter, and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, using only period-authentic instruments
- Fincher opted for cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, with whom he worked on his Netflix series Mindhunter
- Filming began on November 1, 2019, in Los Angeles
- It also took place in Victorville, California
- It wrapped production on February 4, 2020
- Dance stated that a scene involving a drunken Mankiewicz took over 100 takes
- While Seyfried stated that one of her scenes took over a week and 200 takes to shoot
- The 120-page draft of the initial script revealed that Jack Fincher closely followed a claim voiced by Pauline Kael in her 1971 New Yorker article Raising Kane that Welles did not deserve screenwriting credit
- The article angered many critics, including Welles’s friend and fellow filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich who rebutted Kael’s claims point by point in “The Kane Mutiny”, an October 1972 article for Esquire
- Her argument was discredited by several film scholars through the years, including Robert L. Carringer in his study of “The Scripts of Citizen Kane”
- Mank producer Eric Roth reportedly polished the script prior to filming
- David Fincher said he felt early drafts were too anti-Welles
- Mank was released in a limited theatrical release in the United States and Canada on November 13, 2020
- Before beginning to stream worldwide on Netflix on December 4, 2020
- IndieWire reported the film played in 75 theaters during its opening weekend and did “similar business” as other new indie releases The Climb and Ammonite
- It averaged about $300 per venue
- This would mean a $22,500 debut for Mank
- On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 196 critics recommended the film
- With an average rating of 7.9/10
- The site’s critics consensus reads: “Sharply written and brilliantly performed, Mank peers behind the scenes of Citizen Kane to tell an old Hollywood story that could end up being a classic in its own right”
- According to Metacritic, which compiled 42 reviews and calculated a weighted average score of 79 out of 100
- The film received “generally favorable reviews”
