“If we catch John Doe and he turns out to be the devil, I mean if he’s Satan himself, that might live up to our expectations. But he’s not the devil, he’s just a man.”
Before hiring David Fincher, David Cronenberg was asked to direct, but declined. Denzel Washington turned down the role of David Mills that went to Brad Pitt. Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker took two years to write the script while working at Tower Records. Originally it referred to Mills’ previous police partner being killed on a bust with Mills, helping to explain why he was so over protective of Somerset (Morgan Freeman) in some scenes. All references to Parsons were deleted before shooting began. Originally the script had an odd, dwarf-like woman as part of the forensics team appearing in all the cleanups after a murder, hurling foul language at Somerset and Mills. When casting the part of Victor (the sin of sloth), director Fincher was looking for someone that was incredibly skinny, around 80 lbs. Michael Reid MacKay auditioned, and at the time weighed 85 lbs. Fincher cast him and jokingly told him to lose more weight. To Fincher’s surprise, MacKay showed up having lost 5 lbs more. When the film was first shown on network TV, Mills’ line, “Movie of the week” was changed to “Book of the Month”. It has since been restored in showings on Cable TV. All of John Doe’s books were real and took two months to write at a cost of $15,000. According to Lt. Somerset, two months is also the time it would take the police to read all the books. New Line executives originally balked at the film’s ending, but Brad Pitt refused to make the film if the ending was changed. The production cost was $33 million. Wordwide gross was $327 million.
