SEVEN (1995)

Updated: Aug 20, 2019

RATING: 8.4/10✅

Thriller/Action/Psychological

Soon-to-retire detective William Somerset is partnered with short-tempered but idealistic David Mills, who has recently moved to the city with his wife Tracy. Tracy confides to Somerset that she is pregnant and has yet to tell Mills, as she is unhappy with the city and feels it is no place to raise a child. Somerset sympathizes, having had a similar situation with his ex-girlfriend many years earlier, and advises her to tell Mills only if she plans to keep the child.

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Details:

Directed by: David Fincher

Produced by: Arnold Kopelson, Phyllis Carlyle

Written by: Andrew Kevin Walker

Starring: Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, John C. McGinley

Music by: Howard Shore

Cinematography: Darius Khondji

Edited by: Richard Francis-Bruce

Production Company: Cecchi Gori Pictures, Juno Pix

Distributed by: New Line Cinema

Release Date: September 15, 1995 (Alice Tully Hall), September 22, 1995 (United States)

Running Time: 127 minutes

Country: United States

Language: English

Budget: $33 million

Box office: $327.3 million

Production

The ending of the screenplay, with the head in the box, was originally part of an earlier draft that New Line had rejected, instead opting for an ending that involved more traditional elements of a detective thriller film with more action-oriented elements. But when New Line sent David Fincher the screenplay to review for his interest in the project, they accidentally sent him the original screenplay with the head-in-the-box ending. At the time, Fincher had not read a script for a year and a half since the frustrating experience of making Alien 3; he said, "I thought I'd rather die of colon cancer than do another movie". Fincher eventually agreed to direct Seven because he was drawn to the script, which he found to be a "connect-the-dots movie that delivers about inhumanity. It's psychologically violent. It implies so much, not about why you did but how you did it". He found it more a "meditation on evil" rather than a "police procedural".

When New Line realized that they had sent Fincher the wrong draft, the President of Production, Michael De Luca, met with Fincher and noted that there was internal pressure to retain the revised version; De Luca stated that if Fincher promised to produce the movie, they would be able to stay with the head-in-a-box ending. Despite this, producer Kopelson refused to allow the film to include the head-in-a-box scene. Actor Pitt joined Fincher in arguing for keeping this original scene, nothing that his previous film Legends of the Fall had its emotional ending cut after negative feedback from test audiences, and refusing to do Seven unless the head-in-the-box scene remained.