Occasionally, when a bestselling, buzzed-about book is snapped up by a studio, the writer will manage to include a clause that lets them have first crack at the script. Such was the case with Gillian Flynn and her hit tome Gone Girl when 20th Century Fox splashed the cash to buy it. Well, we don’t want to put too much pressure on Flynn, but the director now likely to be poring over her screenplay is one Mr David Fincher.

Gone Girl, which attracted hugely positive reviews and massive sales, follows the mystery of what happens a woman named Amy goes missing on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary.

Her husband Nick becomes the prime suspect in her disappearance, and he does himself no favours by acting shifty and suspicious. But then her diary reveals that she had a secret inner life and the plot takes another turn, one that we won’t spoil here.

The book’s most successful gimmick is alternating chapters told from the point of view of the husband and wife, which will be tough to translate on screen. But Flynn at least has the story well and truly in her head.

Fincher, who most recently made The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and has been producing the Netflix adaptation of House Of Cards, is now in early talks to direct Gone Girl. While Reese Witherspoon had been talked up to star, it now appears she’ll simply produce. Still, don't pencil this in your diary just yet. If Fincher does lock in a deal, we may have to wait a while for the movie, as he’s got plenty of other projects in development, including his take on 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea for Disney.