The New York Film Festival kicked off tonight with the world premiere of David Fincher's Gone Girl (read all of our festival coverage here). Based on the bestseller by Gillian Flynn, the film focuses on the mysterious disappearance of Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) which turns her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) into the prime suspect. A dark tale about the extreme measures people have to take during dire economic circumstances, the film casts a spell upon viewers unlike anything else released recently. Co-starring Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Patrick Fugit, Kim Dickens and Neil Patrick Harris. The press and industry screening was followed by a Q&A with Affleck, Pike, Flynn, Harris and Perry, all of whom had unending praise for the work of Fincher, also in attendance.

Gillian Flynn on turning her book into the screenplay...
"[When first heard about the film adaptation] I kept thinking, it has to be me, it has to be me...and then they were like 'OK, it's you' and I was like 'no! No!'"
"The important thing for me was not to be slavishly devoted to every plotline, not to turn it into a whodunit"

Tyler Perry on being cast in the film
"I didn't know too much about the book...I'm always in my own world,in my own head, but when I got the call from David, I was like 'wow, this is really interesting', when I read the script I was blown away. I just wanted to do my absolute best. The character was so rich"

Neil Patrick Harris on not playing a nice guy
"We were intentionally asked to play people that wouldn't reveal too much. I was over the moon to be a part of it, I like the element that I'm not just creepy in the movie, although I am creepy"

Rosamund Pike on the themes of the film
"We put marriage under a microscope. It seems to me a film about intimacy, when you know someone so well that you can just screw every little sort of knot"

Ben Affleck on working with David Fincher
"I'm at a place as an actor where it's all about the director. I would film the phone book with David. Before all my movies that I've directed I've watched Se7en it's the most perfect, meticulous thing, makes me ask the question, what kind of person would make a movie like this? Despite his reputation David is a nice guy"

David Fincher on choosing the actors
"Ben is just really obvious casting...I think you have to imagine the dynamic that you want. You put together a team and figure out how they're gonna work together, you look at things they naturally have. I met Tyler and was taken back by his calmness, he has this apparatus that makes you feel like you're heard, Rosamund was someone I'd seen in a few movies over the years and I never got a sense of who she was, I met her, we talked for three hours, she told me about her childhood and being an only child I knew the person who played Amy had to have that...and Ben, was available"

Gone Girl opens in theaters on October 3.