There must be more to that story. Netflix, HBO, BBC and a bunch of others keep pumping out these kinds of crime dramas exactly because they are quite conservative bets. They are extremely cheap to produce, a handful of mid-range actors on very mundane locations. They can stay as a miniseries or expand later on as wanted. And if the writing is good some of them become incredibly popular and profitable.
I mean, the last Stranger Things series, of all things, is the single most expensive production in history. More expensive than Marvel films, than both Avatars, than all of Games of Thrones, than Rings of Power per episode… It’s mad, for a quaint small-scale mild-horror story set in the 80s.
There is no way Mindhunter was simply too expensive.
Fincher shoots for very long, does a lot of takes, lights everything like a film. Likely spends a lot of time in the editing room either himself directly or tinkering with the directors that direct the other episodes.
Notice how Mindhunter didn’t “look” like other Netflix shows. The reason for that is they lit it like a movie. And that takes time and money.
I work in the industry. The reason Netflix shows look a certain way is because they are not given the time to do it differently and are shooting almost documentary style or at least much much faster than a regular “prestige” show. Now a good director DP duo can still make this look good, even though it’s hard to do 20 set ups (low budget speed) instead of 5-10 a day (high budget). But that velocity means you shoot at twice the speed. Which is huge considering film costs are people costs. Production is often the expensive segment of a show like Mindhunter.
Fincher likely wouldn’t have agreed to drop episode count or shoot them faster, so they didn’t continue.
