Despite recent successes on the big and small screens with Gone Girl and Netflix’s House Of Cards, it appears that David Fincher is not destined to have the same golden touch with HBO. Though the cable channel’s unflinching environs might have seemed like the perfect home for his sensibilities, it appears budget issues have scuppered his new version of Utopia.
Accordsing to Deadline, clashes over the cost of the series – which adapts Dennis Kelly’s paranoid thriller story from the Channel 4 original with Gone Girl’s Gillian Flynn on script duty had been gearing up to shoot with a cast that included Rooney Mara, Colm Feore, Eric McCormack, Dallas Roberts, Jason Ritter, Brandon Scott and Agyness Deyn.
But with Fincher and the HBO bosses unable to come to terms on how much the whole shebang should cost, the show – at least with the **Social Network **director attached – is now effectively shut down. Since HBO owns the rights, Fincher can’t offer it elsewhere (since Netflix would surely be interested if the option was there) but the cable network might end up trying to get a less costly take made by another directing/ writing team. The cast have been released from their contracts, which is usually the death knell for a show, in this case before it can even start production.
But while that would seemingly give Fincher time to focus on his other potential HBO show, Videosynchrazy (loosely based on his early days in music video production), it seems that the troubled series is also going the way of the dinosaur. That had actually shot several episodes, but it was put on hiatus to address the cable channel’s concerns over script issues. According to The Playlist’s sources, the series has also released its cast and is joining Utopia in limbo. We’ll have to wait and see if it comes back in some form, whether with Fincher involved or not. Given his even closer ties there, we’d doubt it. There’s no word on what this might mean for the noir-flavoured ‘50s-era Hollywood drama he was looking to make with James Ellroy at the channel.