David Fincher's 'Mank': Here's Who's Playing Who In This Screenwriter Biopic

After a long hiatus from feature filmmaking, David Fincher has decided to head back to the movies with Mank, a biopic of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. We already know that Gary Oldman is playing Mankiewicz, but what about the rest of the cast, which includes Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, and more? Info has finally trickled out as to who's who in the Mank cast, including which actor is playing Orson Welles. The answer may shock you! Or not! Just keep reading!

I'm excited that David Fincher is finally returning to film directing. He hasn't helmed a movie since 2014's Gone Girl, and that's too damn long a time to go without a new Fincher film. However, I'm having a hard time getting overly worked-up about Mank, Fincher's new movie. Do we really need another Hollywood biopic? To be fair, Fincher is tackling a figure not many people are overly familiar with: Herman J. Mankiewicz, the screenwriter of Citizen Kane. Mankiewicz was also a sought-after script doctor, brought in to fix many scripts uncredited.

There's also some debate about how much of the Kane script Mankiewicz wrote. The script is credited to both Mankiewicz and Citizen Kane director and star Orson Welles. When the film arrived, Welles – as was his nature – took almost all the credit for the script. Welles also apparently offered Mankiewicz a $10,000 bonus to remove his name from the script entirely so Welles could have sole credit. Welles denied this. Later, critic Pauline Kale added fuel to the fire by writing a lengthy essay claiming the entire script belonged to Mankiewicz. Some of this subject matter was touched on in the HBO film RKO 281, where John Malkovich played Mankiewicz and Liev Schreiber played Welles.

Fincher is likely to give this story much more attention to detail – since that's what he's known for. And now The Playlist has the inside scoop on the cast of characters. Tom Burke, who was recently seen in The Souvenir, will be playing Welles. Amanda Seyfried, meanwhile, will play Marion Davies. Davies was a singer and actress, and also the mistress of  William Randolph Hearst. Hearst, of course, was the inspiration for the central figure of Citizen Kane, and the character of Susan Alexander was said to be modeled on Davies. Lily Collins will portray Mankiewicz's secretary, Tuppence Middelton is Mankiewicz's wife Sara, and Tom Pelphrey is playing Mankiewicz's brother, Joseph.

Mank is something of a passion project for Fincher – the film's script was written by the director's late father, Jack Fincher. There's no release date set yet, but production is set to begin soon.