David Fincher’s First TV Work Was Nearly The Pilot For This Short-Lived Crime Series

David Fincher is one of the industry’s most unique creative minds, and at one point, his first work for TV (not counting music videos or commercials) was going to be the pilot for a short-lived but beloved crime series: the FX comedy-drama “Terriers.” 

The show followed Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James as, respectively, an ex-cop and his best friend — a former criminal— who start an unlicensed private detective operation. It aired for just one season, from early September to early December 2010, and was canceled after being dubbed the lowest-rated first-year drama series for FX at that time.

Despite those statistics, “Terriers” was well-received by critics and earned a small but dedicated following. “[Terriers] felt very ahead of its time,” co-showrunner and executive producer Shawn Ryan told the Television Academy in a retrospective conversation. “It was a special show and, when it ended, it was a heartbreaking kind of time. There were no creative concerns from FX. The show was what we wanted it to be, just not what the audience was looking for [at the time], at least not a big enough audience. But over the years, I kind of made peace with the fact that the show has slowly found its fans. More fans than detractors.”

During the same chat, Ryan explained that the “Fight Club” director was originally in talks to helm the show’s pilot episode. “I don’t want this to come across as any sort of slight toward Craig Brewer, who was our pilot director, but we did have a meeting with Fincher,” he said.

In the Television Academy interview, Ryan said that Fincher was drawn to the project because of the show’s resemblance in tone and story to the iconic 1974 film “Chinatown,” one of the filmmaker’s favorites. The “Se7en” director was also very excited about the writing. “He was really, really impressed with [series creator] Ted [Griffin’s pilot] script, and he was really interested in doing it,” Ryan continued. “He was like, ‘Listen, the key with this is you can’t let an actor change a single word of the script. They’ve just got to say it as written, because the words are just…’ and I was like, in my mind, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to direct this.'” 

However, a major project ended up causing Fincher to drop the series — one that is now considered one of the director’s best. “Then, right near the end of the meeting, he goes, ‘Listen, the only hangup is I have this movie script that Aaron Sorkin has written that I’m thinking about doing,'” Ryan concluded. “That turned out to be ‘The Social Network’ — which, along with ‘Inglourious Basterds,’ may be my two favorite films of the last 20 years. So, I’m ultimately glad that he made that.”

Fincher went on to direct two episodes of the political drama “House of Cards,” seven episodes of the now-dead Netflix true crime drama “Mindhunter,” and two episodes of “Love, Death, & Robots.” There’s still the potential of his English-language spinoff of “Squid Games” coming to fruition at Netflix but not much has been heard on that front since outlets started reporting on it in 2025. Otherwise, he’s stuck to making movies.