Comic-Con 2020: Before Amazon Prime's remake of 'Utopia', here's what happened to David Fincher's 2014 version
As Comic-Con@Home draws nearer, fans are looking forward to news about Amazon Prime's 'Utopia' panel on July 23. The remake of the controversial cult classic will see the British series gain a high-budget American remake. However, this is not the first time the series was up for renewal. In 2014, just as Channel 4 was canceling 'Utopia', HBO announced that director David Fincher would be helming an all-new remake. So what happened?
'Utopia' tells the story of a deep, worldwide conspiracy that appears to be predicted by a comic book known as 'The Utopia Experiments'. A group of fan theorists online find the manuscript for the comic and become an immediate target for shadowy agents seeking to bury the conspiracy at all costs. The series quickly won acclaim for how dark, subversive and mind-bending its plot got. However, despite the critical acclaim it received, Channel 4 canceled the series after two seasons.
Around the same time, it was announced that David Fincher would be directing an American remake. However, the project soon fell apart due to budgetary concerns. According to Fincher, in an interview on the Empire podcast, $9 million would have made all the difference. "I thought we had really, really good scripts and a great cast and we were getting ready to do that and you know it came down to $9 million," he said. "In the end, when you actually kind of lay it all out, $9 million in the scheme of things doesn’t sound like a huge discrepancy between what we wanted to do and what they wanted to pay for."
Fincher, having just come off the commercial and critical hit 'Gone Girl' had ambitious plans for the project, wanting to "sort of rival tentpole movies." One of the reasons that the budget was so high was that Fincher wanted to shoot the entire series in chronological order. "Gillian Flynn wrote the scripts and you know it's a road movie," he said. Fincher had worked with Gillian Flynn previously, who had written both 'Gone Girl' as a novel and as the film adaptation.
"They go from one place to the next place, they burn that place to the ground, they go to the next place and they shave their heads and dye their hair and get tattoos and then burn that place to the ground. It wasn’t 'Cheers'. It wasn't like you build a bar and then generate some pages and the cast comes in and reads some lines." "This was inherently chronological," Fincher continued. "Any time that you sort of impose a chronology to film production things become — because you literally can’t go to the next scene until you finish the scene in the kitchen that burns to the ground. You have to make sure you have it done, then you can burn it to the ground."
It's been six years since all hope for a new 'Utopia' series appeared to have been lost, but the new Amazon Prime remake appears to be bringing the defunct project to life. The show will be helmed by Gillian Flynn herself and David Fincher will be serving as executive producer. The Comic-Con@Home Panel on 'Utopia' will be held on July 23. You can get additional details here.