 The episode was directed by David Fincher and was written by Beau Willimon , who has served as an aide to Charles Schumer , Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton . Independent studio Media Rights Capital purchased the rights to House of Cards , with the intent on creating a series . Netflix agreed to contribute an undisclosed fixed fee to production costs in March 2011 . As he was completing his work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , Fincher was introduced to the original miniseries by his agent and sought to develop a series with Eric Roth . House of Cards was pitched to several cable networks , including HBO , AMC and Showtime . Netflix , interested in launching their own original programming , outbid the networks , picking the series up for 26 episodes , totaling two seasons . Netflix was the only bidder that was interested in purchasing the rights without seeing a completed pilot . Thus , the show was not forced into manipulating story arcs introduced in the pilot to create artificial cliffhangers . 
 The episode was directed by David Fincher and was written by Beau Willimon , <a href='null_relcl' title='1'><mark>who</mark></a><a href='been_done' title='2'><mark>has</mark></a> served as an aide to Charles Schumer , Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton . Independent studio Media Rights Capital purchased the rights to House of Cards , with the intent on creating a series . Netflix agreed to contribute an undisclosed fixed fee to production costs in March 2011 . As he was completing his work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , Fincher was introduced to the original miniseries by his agent and sought to develop a series with Eric Roth . House of Cards was pitched to several cable networks , including HBO , AMC and Showtime . Netflix , interested in launching their own original programming , outbid the networks , picking the series up for 26 episodes , totaling two seasons . Netflix was the only bidder <a href='null_relcl' title='3'><mark>that</mark></a>was interested in purchasing the rights without seeing a completed pilot . Thus , the show was not forced into manipulating story arcs introduced in the pilot to create artificial cliffhangers . 
Da episode was directed by David Fincher and was written by Beau Willimon , done served as an aide to Charles Schumer , Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton . Independent studio Media Rights Capital purchased tdarights to House of Cards , wid thdantent on creating a series . Netflix agreed to contribute an undisclosed fixed fee to production costs in March 2011 . As he was completing his work on Thedarious Case of Benjamin Button , Fincher was introduced to the daginal miniseries by his agent and sought to develop a series with Eric Roth . House of Cards was pitched to several cable networks , including HBO , AMC and Showtime . Netflix , interested in launching their own original programming , outbid the ndaorks , picking the sedas up fir 26 episodes , totaling two seasons . Netflix was the only bidder was interested in purchasing the rights without seeing a completed pilot . Thus , the shodaas not forced into manipulating story arcs introduced in the pilodao create artificial cliffhangers .