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FilmBuff
06-22-24, 10:29 PM
Robert Towne, screenwriter of the original Chinatown, is working on a prequel series over at Netflix.

Now in his 80s, the screenwriter has even returned to “Chinatown” himself, working with David Fincher to script a prequel series that explores Gittes’ days as a newly minted detective patrolling the neighborhood that would come to haunt him.

“All I’m likely to say is yes, all the episodes have been written for Netflix,” Towne writes in an interview with Variety. “Working with a force of nature like David Fincher, tho’ occasionally humbling, is never less than enlightening.”

Netflix did not have a comment on the project. (The streamer also had none when the series was first reported to be in development in 2019.) Nonetheless, Towne’s vision for the prequel seems cohesive, shining light on the tragic events that shaped Gittes into the instinctively cynical (to a fault) private eye that he is in Polanski’s original film.

https://variety.com/2024/film/features/chinatown-50th-anniversary-robert-towne-prequel-david-fincher-1236043979/

GulfportDoc
06-23-24, 07:56 PM
Well, I'm buoyed to hear this news. I had fervently hoped for a third installment of the movie series, especially before Nicholson got too old, but the money people were fearful due to the poor financial return on The Two Jakes, even though IMO it was a very good movie, albeit lacking the punch of the first.

So news of Towne teaming with Fincher makes for the possibility of a first rate prequel series. I suspect it will be a minefield of a writing project, due to the high quality of the two previous stories. And finding a Jake Gittes to be anything like Nicholson's superb characterization would seem to me to be a Herculean task-- if it's even possible.

Still, I'll be looking forward to whatever the come up with.