Leading the winter preview in the October issue of Empire this week is David Fincher's Gone Girl, adapting Gillian Flynn's bestselling thriller. Fincher promises us that this is a date movie that will "end 15 million marriages", and while we can hope he's wrong about that, we're definitely in for a discomfiting ride.
It's all the story of Nick and Amy Dunne (Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike), and what happens when she goes missing and suspicion falls on him. Says Affleck, "I actually think this is the perfect date movie, not because I think it'll result in divorce - I think that's just David's fantasy - but because it's the kind of movie that a husband and wife could talk about afterwards. I think a man and a woman would have different takes on what happens. The last time I was in a movie that I thought polarised men and women in an interesting way was Chasing Amy. That was quite some time ago."
And what does Rosamund Pike think it's all about? "That aspect of marriage as a con game, or whatever. The idea that we perform a sort of ideal version of ourselves that the other person wants. We perhaps belie our true nature in order to perform to the ideal. David and I talked a lot about living in an age of rampant narcissism."
These pictures show the pair unhappily married, as well as Fincher directing Pike in what looks like an underwater scene (hence the weird headgear, which will allow properly wavy hair to be added late) and a table read shot of Neil Patrick Harris as Amy's ex Desi with Carrie Coon, who plays Nick's sister Margo.
**Gone Girl **hits screens on October 3, but you can read much more about the film in the October issue of **Empire, on sale today.