David Fincher has already established a prosperous relationship with Netflix, thanks to his time as a producer of House Of Cards. Now, he’s preparing to deliver a very different kind of series – all about the way the FBI goes about hunting serial killers. Mindhunter will arrive in the fall, and also boasts Academy Award winner Charlize Theron as a co-producer. A teaser trailer was released earlier in the year, which provided little information beyond the setting of a specific tone, but now, we have our first real glimpse of the series.
Mindhunter is based on the book Mind Hunter: Inside FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, written by Mark Olshaker and John E. Douglas. Douglas is a renowned FBI agent who was instrumental in the development of modern profiling techniques that have greatly enhanced the FBI’s ability to track and apprehend serial killers. Famously, he was the basis for the character of Jack Crawford in The Silence Of The Lambs, as well as the characters of Jason Gideon and David Rossi in the TV show Criminal Minds.
This new series stars Jonathan Groff as Holden Ford (a character based directly on John E. Douglas) and Holt McCallany as Bill Trench (a character based directly on Robert K Ressler). Both men are FBI agents working in the agency’s Behavioural Science Unit in 1979. Also featured is Anna Torv as a psychologist named Wendy – a character based on Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess. As the series progresses, the agents spend more and more time interviewing infamous serial killers in jail, while fending off scepticism about their methods from their superiors.
As for the trailer we have today, it provides our first real look at the show and reveals a period piece that’s both unsettling and engrossing. It seems that we’ll effectively see FBI personnel developing new analysis and deduction techniques while in the field, dealing directly with predators and the aftermath of their crimes. As their methods are increasingly called upon for new, ongoing investigations, the pressure and tension mounts, as lives hang in the balance.
Arriving just in time for Halloween binge-watching sessions, Mindhunter settles into Netflix on October 13th.
