Out and about plugging his latest film, Gone Girl, David Fincher has also been talking about his plans – announced earlier this year – to produce a US adaptation of Channel 4’s conspiracy series Utopia. It now emerges that he’ll be even more involved than we thought, because he’s aiming to direct all the episodes of the HBO version’s first season.
Utopia, in case you didn’t see the Channel 4 original, set things in motion with the discovery of a manuscript for a legendary graphic novel known as The Utopia Experiments, long shrouded in mystery. When a small group of previously unconnected people unite in their shared interest, things take a much darker turn.
It turns out that they are by no means the only ones interested in the manuscript. Targeted swiftly and relentlessly by a murderous organisation known as The Network, the terrified group are left with only one option if they want to survive: run.
“I like the characters – I love Dennis Kelly’s honesty and affinity for the nerds,” Fincher tells The Guardian. “I mean, I’ve always been a bit of a junior conspiracy theorist ‘cos I don’t have time to connect them all! But it’s nice to see that somebody has.”
Unlike House Of Cards, where he shot the first two episodes, established the series’ look and then handed off the job to other directors, he’s going to replicate Cary Fukunaga’s True Detective trick and shoot all of Utopia’s initial run across 2015, working from a script by Gone Girl novelist (and screenwriter) Gillian Flynn. **Gone Girl **itself lands on Friday.