HBO’s ‘Succession’ Was Inspired by a David Fincher Pure Thriller Classic

2 weeks ago 10

The cast stand on the balcony of a high-rise building in a poster for Succession season 4.

Published Feb 12, 2026, 6:30 AM EST

Max hails from Buffalo, NY also known as the city of good neighbors. When he isn't working, managing music artists, or writing, he is watching movies of all types. With an academic background in Psychology and Criminal Justice, Max enjoys movies that correlate with those genres the most. He has written for Collider since 2022 and has worked in front of and behind the camera on several film sets both big and small.

Ever since he was small, Max enjoyed both making short movies and watching everything he could. He boasts an ability to identify a movie within seconds of seeing it onscreen, a skill underappreciated in the era of streaming. He is constantly looking for the next gripping crime drama or deep character study to write about.

Inspiring countless song edits, TikToks, and comedy sketches, the opening credits to HBO’s Succession grabbed a spot in the cultural zeitgeist almost instantly. Now that the critically acclaimed series has ended, that simple piano sequence feels even more locked in, like a shorthand for a whole era of TV. Play it in a room, and you’ll get recognition on reflex. And while the theme song and the matching montage sparked an endless amount of love and imitation, Succession was also drawing from an earlier blueprint: the grainy home-movie B-roll and spare, unsettling music of a David Fincher intro that was doing this long before the Roys ever hit the screen. That movie is Fincher’s 1997 psychological thriller The Game.

Written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris and starring Michael Douglas, the film follows an obscenely wealthy businessman who’s gifted the chance to participate in a life-altering game. Douglas’ Nicholas Van Orton is pushed into a chain of escalating events that warps his sense of what’s real and what’s part of the experience he agreed to. Often overshadowed by Fincher’s bigger titles, it’s still more than worth a revisit if you haven’t seen it. And once you watch its opening, it’s hard not to start clocking the parallels to Succession almost immediately.

'The Game' and 'Succession' Intros Are Presented Similarly

In terms of how the intros are presented, the similarities are crystal clear. The aesthetic is aiming to look like the home videos that the characters in each of the stories were a part of. Seeing as both The Game and Succession involve the ultra-wealthy, neither the Roys nor Nick Van Orton’s parents are holding the camera. Both of the intros see a montage of B-roll footage surrounding a large estate on a pleasant day, and both use a film-grain high-exposure camera look. These intros are designed to give context to the characters and events in the film and series, respectively. Whereas the Succession intro is interspersed with high-definition shots of the New York City skyline and printing presses, The Game’s intro stays on a single day in the past of the main character, namely, Nick van Orton’s father’s birthday.

With both intros featuring a piano-heavy song in the background, the connection is further cemented. Whereas Succession’s intro is arguably a bit more upbeat than that of The Game, both are still daunting and ominous, preparing the audience for what lies ahead. When viewers of Fincher’s film are given more about Van Orton and his family throughout the film, the somber tone makes more sense. If there’s one thing that is obvious about both of the intros, besides the music and the look, it’s that the audience is shown that the characters we are about to see onscreen were born into wealth and affluence, as shown by the sprawling estates that the intro sequences take place at. The content of each intro does reveal different clues to what lies ahead for the viewers, however.

The Scenes Shown in Each Are Different in Important Ways

The goal of these intros is in line with the idea that they want to give the audience a sense of the main characters' relationships with their parents. In Fincher’s film, there are really clear shots of a young Nick Van Orton’s face, other presumable friends and relatives, and Nick’s father throughout. This is interspersed with images of the birthday party and later solo shots of father Van Orton alone, smoking or walking. This becomes important as you find out that Nick witnessed his father die by suicide on his 48th birthday, the very birthday that the home video was shot at. The intro tells the audience that Nick may have had an alright or even good relationship with his father until that fateful day when everything changed. In fact, the whole reason Nick is gifted the chance to participate in The Game is as a birthday present on his own 48th birthday.

In the Succession intro credits, there are some interesting content differences from The Game. For one, the grainy home video footage is cut together with modern-looking cinematic footage of the New York City skyline, ATN headlining newscasts, and printing presses. Furthermore, the faces of younger Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his wife at the time, Caroline (Harriet Walter), are blurred and not shown very much in comparison to the Roy kids. The shots of Logan we do get are from a distance, and often him walking away as well. This is meant to give the audience a sense of the disconnection and emotional neglect that were always very present in the Roy household and affect them to this very day.

Bill leaning forward in front of a chain link barrier

The choice to use grainy film footage has a dual purpose in these cases as well. The effect it gives in presenting what is on the screen as a home movie is the most obvious use, but thematically it works as well. Film footage often sees warmer colors, and that is true of both Succession and The Game’s opening credits. What we see contained within the footage tells us that the warmth of how the footage looks is in direct contrast to the emotional coldness of the families we see. This is more apparent in the Succession intro than that of The Game, but with the added context of what happens with Nick’s father in Fincher’s film, the understanding that it is telling of who Nick Van Orton becomes in life is that much more apparent.

After watching the intro to The Game, there is no doubt one can have about its influence on Succession. The key differences point to the differences in the characters’ early relationships with their parents and give us context as to why they are the way they are when we are watching them in the present. Hopefully, Succession inspires future movies or series to use the intro similarly and carry on the idea that intro credit sequences can be just as important to the program as other elements.