No, this is not an elaborate rouse by a crazed scientist from another universe- Anna Torv is returning to television! Or whatever Netflix is in the ever expanding, increasingly ambiguous media landscape.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Torv has joined David Fincher’s upcoming crime drama Mind Hunter. The series is based on the 1996 book Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker. The show reportedly centers around two FBI agents who interview serial killers in 1979 in efforts to figure out other murder cases. Torv will play a psychologist, Wendy.
Torv is best known for starring in Fox’s cult favorite Fringe. She played protagonist Olivia (as well as alternate- universe- Olivia and, briefly, Leonard Nimoy) for five seasons. She was set to be in Ryan Murphy’s HBO show Open, but the project failed to move forward, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Torv will also star in Australia’s (her home country) thriller series Secret City later this year. Jonathan Groff, who recently starred in his own HBO intimate character study Looking, has already been cast as one of the main FBI agents.
Not much has been revealed about the show, but it’s interesting to consider the history of the men behind the Mind Hunter book. Olshaker has written and made films about not just criminality but science and politics as well. A Powell Tribune story that ran last year talked about Douglas’s intense career as an FBI profiler. He interviewed some of the most grizzly criminals of all time including Ted Bundy and Charles Manson. ““It was considered innovative, but to me, it was basic,” Douglas told the Powell Tribune. “If you want to learn about violent crime, talk to the experts: the criminals perpetrating rapes, arsons and serial homicides.” Douglas is even the basis of the fictional character Jack Crawford, the FBI agent who’s appeared in pretty much every book, film, and show of the Hannibal Lecter series. The pair have written seven books together, Mind Hunter being the first.
This kind of grim backdrop seems perfect for Fincher who’s made his name off of some of the most notable, pitch black crime films of our time like Seven, Zodiac, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. He most recently adapted Gillian Flynn’s massively popular novel Gone Girl into and Oscar- nominated film starring Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck.