 The episode was directed by David Fincher and was written by Beau <unk> , who has served as an aide to Charles <unk> , 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 <unk> . 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 <unk> . 
