David Fincher Confirms 'Mindhunter' Is Done For Now, Originally Planned To End It With BTK Killer In The 2000s

David Fincher's serial killer series Mindhunter became one of Netflix's instant critical hits, but was not enough of a commercial hit to justify a third season. As the future of the series remains in limbo, Fincher, whose new film Mank hits the streaming service soon, has confirmed in a new interview that it is effectively done...for now.

Fincher had revealed to Vulture back in late October that Mindhunter most likely wouldn't see a third season at Netflix due to the series' costly budget and low viewership. But in a new interview with Variety ahead of the upcoming streaming release of his Netflix film Mank, Fincher said he would still be open to "revisit it":

"At some point I'd love to revisit it. The hope was to get all the way up to the late 90's, early 2000's, hopefully get all the way up to people knocking on the door at Dennis Rader's house."

Based on the true-crime book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit written by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker, the first two seasons of the Joe Penhall-created series Mindhunter spanned the late 1970s to early 1980s, documenting the rise of criminal profiling at the FBI and featured fictionalized versions of real-life serial killers like Edmund Kempe and covered cases like the Atlanta murders of 1979 through 81.

It seems that Fincher's original plans for the series would go on for at least another two seasons, ending with the case of Dennis Rader, who was known as the BTK Killer. Rader killed 10 people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991 and was infamous for sending letters to the police, taunting them with gruesome details of his crimes. Rader was eventually arrested in 2005. The BTK Killer has been on Mindhunter's mind since the beginning, as Rader's introduction has been seeded throughout the first and second seasons.

But while Fincher is leaving the door open for a potential return to Mindhunter in the future, he confirmed again that the series is dead, with no new episodes planned:

"I don't know if it makes sense to continue. It was an expensive show. It had a very passionate audience, but we never got the numbers that justified the cost... I certainly needed some time away. We had all hands on deck to finish [season two] and we didn't have a ton of scripts and a ton of outlines and a bible standing by for season three. I'll admit I was a little bit like 'I don't know that I'm ready to spend another two years in the crawl space.'"

You can watch the first two seasons of Mindhunter on Netflix now, while Mank arrives on December 4, 2020.