FILM · 2014 · USA
Gone Girl
- Directed by
- David Fincher
- Runtime
- 149 min
- Studio
- 20th Century Fox, Regency Enterprises, TSG Entertainment
30 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.
Summary: TMDB
All facts (30)
- #001
To understand his character, Ben Affleck researched and studied several men who had been accused and convicted of murdering their wives. He paid particular attention to Scott Peterson.
- #002
The bar featured in the film opened as a functioning bar and restaurant after shooting and operated for several years. It has since closed permanently.
- #003
Rosamund Pike claimed that, at David Fincher's request, she and Neil Patrick Harris spent two hours completely alone on set to rehearse their sex scene.
- #004
David Fincher explained that one of his reasons for casting 35-year-old Rosamund Pike as Amy was that her appearance made her age ambiguous, allowing her to pass for either an older or a younger woman. According to Fincher, Rosamund's revelation that she herself was an only child also proved to be a very attractive quality for Amy's character.
- #005
Reese Witherspoon acquired the film rights from Gillian Flynn in June 2012 and decided to produce under her new production company "Pacific Standard" because she could play the role of Amy. However, after her first meeting with David Fincher about the film's vision, Witherspoon realized she was not the right person to play the female lead and withdrew from contention without a fight.
- #006
When it came to casting, David Fincher often went online to look at pictures of actors to help him find the right type for a role. While casting the role of Nick Dunne, Fincher saw photos of Ben Affleck and noticed that Affleck had a certain smile in dozens of photographs. According to Fincher, he captured a specific emotion in the smile scene that showed the essence of the character of Nick Dunne. Fincher soon cast Ben Affleck in the role.
- #007
The musical brief David Fincher gave Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross was based on a visit he made to a spa, where the music was intended to relax him but which he perceived as eerie and which made him uncomfortable. This gave him the idea of tuning the music so that it seemed passive and relaxing but actually evoked a sense of dread.
- #008
As a result of Ben Affleck taking on the role of Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), his weight fluctuates in the film from a fairly average build to muscular.
- #009
To portray her character at different periods of her life, Rosamund Pike gained and lost thirteen kilos three times. To gain weight she stuffed herself with hamburgers and malts, exercised for about four hours a day with a professional boxer, and to lose weight ran five miles (in forty-two minutes).
- #010
Rosamund Pike told film critic Peter Travers that when David Fincher caught her about to use her cell phone on set, she took a "stern face" selfie, sent it to him, and immediately put her phone in her pocket.
- #011
Regarding the casting of the lead character, David Fincher said he wanted an actress with a Faye Dunaway-style persona. The director told Playboy magazine: "I wanted Faye Dunaway in Chinatown (1974), where you think, 'This person has experienced painful paths that no one can put into words.' Or Faye in Network (1976), 'You'll never get to the heart of this, so stop.' It's so crazy how much Rosamund Pike reminds me of Faye."
- #012
Initially Nick was supposed to wear a Yankees cap in one scene. However, Ben Affleck, a strict Red Sox fan, refused to wear it. In the end he and David Fincher compromised and he wore a Mets cap.
- #013
Over the hundred-day shoot, David Fincher shot an incredible five hundred hours of material, averaging five hours a day.
- #014
Ben Affleck, thinking their characters were supposed to be twins, was concerned about the nine-year age gap between himself and Carrie Coon and chose to play Nick as thirty years old.
- #015
The entire game played with different colored pens was Gillian Flynn's visual solution for translating Amy's diary to the screen.
- #016
The character of Tanner Bolt was originally written as an "Alec Baldwin type."
- #017
In a magazine article about the making of the film, Rosamund Pike said that in a scene where she makes pancakes, she added a measure of kindness not in the script to give Ben Affleck a carefree rapport. Pike said the nature of Nick and Amy's relationship did not allow for or require much playfulness, if any, but that she wanted to add it because it could either seem to show an intimate and fundamental love between Nick and Amy or be another part of Amy's warped psychology compared to everything else she says and does in the film.
- #018
20th Century Fox and HBO nearly did not let Carrie Coon audition for Margo, because Margo was already committed to a lead role in The Leftovers (2014) and there was no guarantee HBO would change its shooting schedule to accommodate her, so both studios thought it would be a waste of everyone's time. In the end, after flying to Los Angeles to meet David Fincher, she auditioned and was offered the role a few days later.
- #019
A billboard advertising Amy's disappearance promoted the website "FindAmazingAmy.Com". This was a working website featuring a news ticker from KRBK-TV (the Springfield, MO-based FOX affiliate), offering information about Amy Dunne's disappearance and links to the film's social media pages and official trailer. As of August 2019, the URL now redirects to the 20th Century Fox movies homepage.
- #020
Appearing on the Michael Che/Rosamund Pike/Colony House (2014) program, Rosamund Pike was strikingly candid about her feelings regarding sex while discussing Gone Girl (2014): "You're alone with a man who is not your husband and who also has a husband (Neil Patrick Harris) — he's in his underwear, you're in your underwear, and you're on a bed sort of dry-humping," she told Seth Meyers. She described the experience as primarily strange, though she also noted that shooting it that day went well. The most uncomfortable part was the rehearsal, because there was no camera present to clearly show what they intended to do.
- #021
It was Carrie Coon's first feature film.
- #022
In an August 2014 interview with New York Magazine, Tyler Perry said he knew nothing about the film's source novel or about David Fincher, and that he would not have accepted his role in the film if he had: "I probably would have walked away from it. If I had known who David Fincher was and his body of work, or that the book was so popular and that so many people loved it, I would have said 'No,' and my agent knew that! He didn't tell me until I signed, and the reason I wouldn't have done it is that when things become that magical for people and that special to them, there's so much pressure to make it the way they want it to be."
- #023
The character Ellen Abbott is clearly based on television host Nancy Grace.
- #024
Most of the doors and windows in the daytime interior scenes were fitted with green screens, and the backgrounds were added later because it was impossible to reveal the interiors without going outside.
- #025
Neil Patrick Harris told Out magazine in 2014 that the choreography of the film's sex scene was prepared in detailed fashion: "We had to rehearse every inch of the sex scene with David: 'Then you put your mouth on his dick, then a series of thrusts, and then you come.' It was weird because technically we're breaking the sex scene down into pieces. He wanted it to be almost robotic, for us to know exactly where we were positionally and where everything was going."
- #026
Reese Witherspoon, Charlize Theron, Natalie Portman, Emily Blunt, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Abbie Cornish and Julianne Hough were considered for the role of Amy Dunne.
- #027
Rosamund Pike used a Dora the Explorer (2000) doll to rehearse the sex scene with Neil Patrick Harris.
- #028
It was the first screenplay written by Gillian Flynn and also the first film adaptation of any of Flynn's works.
- #029
While Nick and Amy have sex in the library, they talk about Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice." Rosamund Pike was one of the leads in Pride & Prejudice (2005), playing Jane Bennet.
- #030
Greta, Amy's neighbor at the campground, first appears listening to Kreayshawn's song "Left Ey3." The song is about finding out your boyfriend cheated on you, then burning his house down and/or hurting him and the person he cheated with.
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