Have you been wondering where David Fincher has disappeared to since he directed the English-language version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? Well, you can thank Disney for that. The A-list director was supposed to be putting together a new version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for them, but the process has proved to be more challenging than anyone would have liked. According to Variety, Disney has had a hold on Fincher for the last three months as they try and decide if they still want to go forward with the film. A large part of the problem seems to be securing a big name star to anchor the project, with Fincher wanting Brad Pitt and not yet being able to land him. The good news is, our wait for the next Fincher movie may soon be over. While it’s possible that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea could still be his next job, he’s now started looking around for something else to do. More specifically, he’s negotiating with Fox to direct their upcoming adaptation of the Gillian Flynn novel “Gone Girl.” The rights for this one were so hot that Fox had to pay seven figures to keep it out of the clutches of Universal when it went on the market last summer, so it would make sense that they would look to one of the industry’s top directors, like Fincher, to bring the whole thing together.

That did not take long. Author Gillian Flynn‘s third novel, “Gone Girl,” only hit shelves on June 5, but it’s already the talk of the publishing world and a bonafide must-read that’s poised to be the breakout novel of the summer (it’s also at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list). Flynn’s no stranger to signing deals to adapt her clever and dark novels (her “Sharp Objects” was optioned by Alliance and Amy Adams is set to star in a film version of “Dark Places”), but even she must be reeling at the news out of Comic-Con that “Gone Girl” has been snapped up by 20th Century Fox for a cool seven figures. Deadline Del Mar reports that Reese Witherspoon, Bruna Papandrea, and Leslie Dixon will produce the film, with a script coming from Flynn herself. The book was reportedly a hot auction, with other studios like Universal hoping to snap up the rights. The outlet also speculates that the recent “Fifty Shades Of Grey action has elevated interest in bestsellers geared to female readers.” While the book certainly involves women (it centers on a woman who goes missing), it’s by no means some sort of “Fifty Shades” knock-off, as Flynn specializes in wicked suspense thrillers that appeal to a wide variety of readers.

Three-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams has taken on some varied roles over the course of her career and, despite some forays into darker material (Doubt, The Fighter, and most likely the upcoming The Master), Adams has always provided a ray of sunlight into her works (even really gritty sunlight, like in The Fighter). However, her next project will plunge Adams into a blackness we’ve yet to see from her – and I can’t wait for it. Variety reports that Adams is currently in negotiations to star in Gilles Paquet-Brenner‘s Dark Places, an adaptation of Gillian Flynn‘s novel of the same name. Adams would play Libby Day, a hardened character who witnessed the murder of most of her family when she was just seven. It was Libby’s testimony that put her fifteen-year-old brother behind bars for the crimes, but that’s given her little solace twenty-five years later. Nearly broke and an outcast from the rest of the world, Libby is approached by “the Kill Club,” a secret society who are bent on freeing Ben. And, well, that’s not a good thing for Libby.