This David Fincher movie inspired True Detective season 4

Jan. 17, 2024

“It just clicked massively with True Detective”

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True Detective season 4 showrunner Issa López has revealed one of her biggest inspirations for the latest installment of the crime drama – and it’s a David Fincher movie.

“One of the biggest influences that I ever will have in this genre, and honestly in cinema in general, is Se7en and these two enormously different characters that come together to solve a mystery,” López toldDeadline.

“I’m sure that was one of the references that informed [True Detective creator Nic] Pizzolatto’s writing, at least unconsciously, so I was thinking of Se7en. It was two detectives, a forgotten corner of America with its own system of culture and rituals, and it just clicked massively with True Detective. It didn’t take a lot of effort.”

Fincher’s 1995 crime thriller stars Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt as a pair of detectives – one nearing retirement, the other much fresher in his career – as they try to stop a serial killer carrying out a series of murders based on the seven deadly sins.

The latest season of True Detective, meanwhile (officially titled True Detective: Night Country), sees Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as the detective duo working in the city of Ennis, Alaska, who are tasked with solving the case of eight missing employees of the Tsalal Arctic Research Station. The men vanish without a trace on the eve of the “long night” when the town doesn’t see daylight for around two months between November and January.

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I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.

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