![]() ![]() Although the Channel 4 series wasn’t watched by millions of viewers, it was a highly influential series which gained a passionate cult following. So is the Amazon Prime Video series a remake of Channel 4’s Utopia? This version of Utopia is ultimately a story about truth, spin, conspiracy, friendship, courage and bunnies.” “Yet despite the surreal resonance, Utopia is not a medical procedure or even a story about a pandemic. “I wanted bursts of fear, epiphany and the kind of laughs that blast out of you unexpectedly.”Ĭommenting on the show’s resonance with current events, she said: “The story touches on a world-changing pandemic: we filmed last year in Chicago and finished editing in quarantine. As I was pitching my vision to studios, I described it as Marathon Man meets The Goonies. “Gnarly, nasty, raw and unnerving -and yet I wanted to be sure it was peopled with the kinds of characters you really become fond of. “As I approached the series, I took my inspiration from 1970s paranoia thrillers like Parallax View and All the President’s Men,” said Flynn. ![]() We may never get viewing metrics from Amazon or any of the streamers, who are under no obligation to provide them, but it sure would be helpful in understanding some of their decisions, both as a critic and a consumer who pays multiple streaming bills each month.Writer Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, Sharp Objects), started writing Utopia seven years ago as a fan of Dennis Kelly’s “sleek and propulsive” UK series I have no explanation, but obviously it comes down to Amazon's formula regarding cost versus eyeballs. Why was Hunters renewed and not Utopia? Well, its reviews were a bit better, and it had more of a 'fun' hook. Why did The Expanse get a sixth season? That I can't tell you. I'll miss this cast, which included John Cusack, Rainn Wilson, Sasha Lane, Desmin Borges, Dan Byrd, Ashleigh LaThrop, Farrah Mackenzie, Christopher Denham and Euphoria's Javon Walton, but at the same time, I'm glad they're now free to do other things, because I don't think a second season would have necessarily improved upon the first without jumping the shark a la Lost.Īs for Amazon, I wish it hadn't allowed the potential audience for Utopia to busy itself watching The Boys, which also held the focus and attention of the streamer's marketing department, making the Utopia launch something of an afterthought. Better to invest that money in either a fresh idea or another IP that could catch on with the culture rather than serve up seconds of a meal that no one was all that interested in the first time around. It just never had the breakout success envisioned by the streamer, and at that point, given the themes of the material and the current state of the world, the cost just isn't worth it. ![]() ![]() So while I was personally looking forward to a second season of Utopia and delving deeper into the mystery behind its titular comic book, I completely understand why the show just wasn't worth the potential headache for Amazon. The streamer obviously has no problem with violent shows, since it released Season 2 of The Boysjust three weeks before Utopia.īut this was a show in which children were routinely killed and the characters (rightly) questioned a vaccine, which is not something America or the rest of the world really needs right now. Now, if Utopia had scored with critics or subscribers, I think Amazon would've ordered a second season without blinking. Yes, it was an eerily timely series about a pandemic, but television is supposed to be a distraction from the real world more than a reflection, and people could basically look out their window and get the paranoid gist of Utopia, which upped the ante, naturally, in terms of violence.Ĭoming from the writer of Gone Girl, this shouldn't have been a major surprise, especially since I was familiar with the original UK series, but Flynn's Utopia was an incredibly violent show, particularly for one with such a young cast. For starters, timing is everything in Hollywood, and Utopia could not have come at a worse time. ![]()
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