https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1giVzxyoclE
“What’s in da box?!” It’s something most every fan of David Fincher’s Seven has said while opening a package over the last two decades. Few endings in movie history are as nihilistic, brutal or memorable as Seven‘s, and now Gwyneth Paltrow is translating the iconic and nightmarishly dark finale into a pleasant Halloween costume that should win a possibly nonexistent Best of 2017 competition with ease.
If you haven’t seen Fincher’s 1995 classic, this might mean nothing to you, or, you could be spoiled. But if people are out there trying to avoid spoilers for a movie that’s over twenty years old, then there isn’t much anyone can do when Halloween costume like this wins the year.
Anyway, here’s Paltrow with her “pretty head” in a box, next to “John Doe.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ba1wvKjHI-8/?taken-by=gwynethpaltrow
The main takeaway here is that Paltrow’s amazing costume never would’ve come into existence if New Line Cinema had their way. Not only did fate determine that Fincher receive Andrew Kevin Walker’s original script with the head-in-box ending (when it had already been rewritten for a more palatable ending), but Brad Pitt and Fincher insisted that the studio not change the ending to have the box contain a dog’s head or something other than Paltrow.
This is why executives shouldn’t meddle with creatives — narrative integrity and potentially awesome Halloween costumes decades later.