Se7en Ending: Director David Fincher Reveals What Was Really in the Box

“What was in the box? What’s in the box?” Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) — agonizing over the contents of serial killer John Doe’s (Kevin Spacey) “souvenir” — screams in the final moments of 1995’s Se7en. The tragic answer is the severed head of Mills’ pregnant wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), murdered so that Mills would become wrath: one of the seven deadly sins. With the thriller heading to IMAX screens and 4K UHD for the first time this month in celebration of the film’s 30th anniversary, director David Fincher is answering an oft-asked question: What was really in the box?

Because Tracy’s severed head is never shown inside the box, rumors have persisted that the box contained a prosthetic head modeled after Paltrow. Fincher dismissed the theory, telling Entertainment Weekly that the rumor is “entirely ridiculous.” Instead, it’s left to the imagination as seen through the eyes of Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman).

RELATED: Seven 4K Blu-ray Limited Edition Steelbook Arrives January 2025

“I think we had a seven- or eight-pound shot bag. We had done the research to figure out, if Gwyneth Paltrow’s body mass index was X, what portion of that would be attributable to her head. And so we had an idea of what that would weigh, and I think there was a weight in it,” Fincher explained. “And we did put a wig in there, so that when Morgan rips the box open if there were some of this tape that was used to seal the box — I think it was a shot bag and a wig, and I think the wig had a little bit of blood in it, so some of the hair would stick together. Remember, I think Morgan opened 16 or 17 of those things.”

“But as I always say,” Fincher continued, “you don’t need to see what’s in the box if you have Morgan Freeman.”

You also don’t need to see what’s in the box if you’re filmmaker Jeremiah Chechik, who was attached to direct before Fincher (whose sole credit as director at the time was 1992’s Alien 3) boarded the project. In 2017, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker told The Hollywood Reporter that the Christmas Vacation filmmaker asked him to remove the now-classic ending of Doe delivering to Mills his wife’s head in a box.

As it happens, it was the script with Walker’s original ending — not the reworked version — that made it to Fincher.

“[Fincher] expressed some interest, but in expressing his interest to them, had mentioned there was a head in the box,” Walker said. “And they were like, ‘Oh, no, no, no. We sent you the wrong draft.’ And then they sent him the vastly rewritten, Jeremiah Chechik draft, which had a completely different ending and Fincher said, ‘No, I wouldn’t be interested in doing that.’”

Se7en returns to theaters for a limited engagement starting Jan. 3, and debuts its newly-remastered 4K release on physical and digital on Jan. 7 with the following special features, including the original “test” ending and animatics from an un-shot ending:

• Commentaries —
• The Stars: David Fincher, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman
• The Story: Richard Dyer, Andrew Kevin Walker, Richard Francis-Bruce, Michael De Luca, David Fincher
• The Picture: Darius Khondji, Arthur Max, Richard Francis-Bruce, Richard Dyer, David Fincher
• The Sound: Ren Klyce, Howard Shore, Richard Dyer, David Fincher
• Deleted Scenes –
• Car Ride in from Gluttony
• My Future
• Raid on Victor’s
• Spare Some Change?
• Tracy Wakes from Light Sleep
• Pride
• Alternate endings –
• Animated storyboards of un-shot ending
• Original “Test” ending
• Still Photographs (featurettes) –
• John Doe’s Photographs
• Victor’s Decomposition
• Police Crime Scene Photographs
• Production Photographs
• The Notebooks
• Production Design (featurette)
• Mastering for the Home Theater (featurette)
• Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence: Early Storyboards (featurette)
• Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence: Rough Version (featurette)
• Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence: Final Edit (featurette)
• Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence: Stereo Audio Commentary One – The Concept – Designer Kyle Cooper (featurette)
• Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence: Stereo Audio Commentary Two – The Sound – Brant Biles & Robert Margouleff (featurette)
• Theatrical EPK

You can rent or buy Se7en digitally wherever movies are sold.