Both David Fincher’s HBO ‘Utopia’ and ‘Video Synchronicity’ Might Be Dead

We weren’t terribly broken up to learn that David Fincher’s ‘80s music comedy Video Synchronicity had halted production, though those angling for his and Gone Girl writer Gillian Flynn’s take on U.K. series Utopia, complete with Rooney Mara in the lead, may be in for some bad news. Neither may happen now, as HBO may not see eye to eye with Fincher anymore

According to The Hollywood Reporter, HBO and Fincher may yet salvage the scripts and existing footage of Synchronicity, which abruptly shut down production in June, though Fincher’s interim work on Utopia may have hit a budget standstill. “We’re at that moment,” says HBO boss Michael Lombardo, “trying to figure out if there is a path forward or not for Utopia.”

As to Video Synchronicity:

When we both saw the third and fourth [episodes], we realized we needed to go back and do some work on the scripts. David’s attention at that point — he is someone who likes to be hands on, on everything — got diverted by another projec. [He's] not good at letting us go ahead and do what we needed to do on Video Synchronicity while he was working on Utopia. I texted with him today, we’re going to turn our attention soon back to Video Synchronicity and figure out the path forward. But I fully expect we’re going to be able to finish that up.”

Set in the 1983 LA music scene, Video Synchronicity stars Charlie Rowe, Sam Page, Jason Flemyng, Kerry Condon, Elizabeth Lail, Corbin Bernsen and Paz Vega, following Rowe’s character Robby as he drops out of college and moves to Hollywood. Hoping to work on sci-fi films, Robby instead finds himself a production assistant helping make music videos, and intermingling with drugged-out directors, executives and crew of the exploding scene.

So reads HBO’s logline for Utopia, which itself will be penned by Flynn, and both produced and directed by Fincher:

The die-hard fans of an iconic, underground graphic novel are suddenly launched into their own pop-culture thriller when they learn that the author has secretly written a sequel. Unfortunately, the new manuscript is much more than just a book and those on the hunt for it suddenly find themselves in a game of shifting loyalties, conspiracy and shocking twists as the true meaning of the book is slowly revealed.

Lombardo downplayed the likelihood of both series falling apart, but which should we hope Fincher pursues more actively, Utopia or Video Synchronicity?