David Fincher and Gillian Flynn, the duo behind the movie Gone Girl (maybe you’ve heard about it; it’s a little indie flick that’s gained some traction recently) are about to team up again. The director will helm the entire first season of the HBO series Utopia, with Flynn writing the episodes. Utopia is a remake of the British conspiracy thriller series, which gained a cult following and criticisms of its violence and blatant disregard for historical fact following its broadcast on Britain’s Channel 4. Utopia is about comic-book fans who become targets of ‘The Network’ – a shadowy group of industrialists, scientists, and assassins – after they discover an unpublished manuscript forThe Utopia Experiments, a cult graphic novel. “Where is Jessica Hyde?” became the question every viewer was asking, the 2013 version of “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” (and if you don’t know the answer to that, please don’t tell me; it will simply remind me that I am ancient.) Fincher, the Oscar-winning director of The Social Network, Seven, Zodiac, Fight Club, and that terrible Alien movie you’re trying to forget, is a big fan of the show. I like the world of it,” he told The Guardian. “I like the characters—I love Dennis’s [Kelly, creator of the U.K. show] honesty and affinity for the nerds. I mean, I’ve always been a bit of a junior conspiracy theorist [because] I don’t have time to connect them all! But it’s nice to see that somebody has.”
This is not the first time Fincher has worked in television, nor his first remake. He directed the first two episodes of the U.S version of House of Cards and the Hollywoodized Scandinavian thriller The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It will be interesting to see his take on Utopia, which earned praise for its visual style, and perhaps HBO wants him to direct all the episodes to keep a consistent tone, as was the case with the first season of True Detective, directed by Cary Fukunaga, and which for some reason will not be the case with the dark philosophical drama’s second season.
