
There’s a reason why you likely haven’t seen UTOPIA, but you should remedy that whenever you can.
The Channel 4 series ran for two seasons, where it told the story of a comic book that foretold the end of the world, the group that hunted relentlessly for its creator, and the forces that sought to keep the apocalypse uncanceled, before it was announced that David Fincher and Gillian Flynn would be adapting it for an HBO series. So why air it here, when the big bad boys of dramatic cable series were prepping a take by the director and writer of the buzzy, controversial GONE GIRL?
Well, that HBO adaptation fell through due to budget constraints, so not only was there no incentive to air the original series over here, but all the potential attention the remake would’ve given to Kelly’s creation was jettisoned out the airhole like ALIEN. So in this age of comic book ubiquity, where seemingly every week sees a film (not to mention an ever-increasing number of TV series) released either about, related to, or influenced by the medium , this intense, witty, often shocking show centered around a graphic novel remains quite unknown on this side of the pond.
This is a long way of me saying that the hiring of Dennis Kelly for WORLD WAR Z 2 is probably the best hope for its success that I’ve heard thus far.
Kelly, who also wrote BLACK SEA, was apparently a bargaining chip offered by Paramount to keep director J.A. Bayona onboard and away from JURASSIC WORLD 2. The ORPHANAGE/THE IMPOSSIBLE director was allegedly ready to jump ship for that other sequel, and the idea was that getting Kelly (possibly proposed by Bayona himself?) to work on the film would be incentive to keep him around.
I don’t know if that’s going to work, but they certainly have my ticket bought. WORLD WAR Z famously had huge problems restructuring its third act, and still felt rather thin even with guys like J. Michael Straczynski, Drew Goddard, Matthew Carnahan, and Damon Lindelof (who has burned his LOST goodwill with each of his produced scripts) on writing duties. If they stick with Kelly, which it seems that their director may be insistent on, they’ll solve the problem of having the film feel like the patchworked fluff (though admittedly enjoyable) that the first one did. UTOPIA was sprawling in scope, often at odds with the limited budget and 6-episode seasons, but kept things fascinating, immediate, and exciting even in potentially distracting moves; for example, the second season premiere served as a series prequel (featuring former Wildling Rose Leslie) and featured none of the main characters or hanging plotlines from the previous season, and is considered by some to be the best episode of the whole run. The creatives behind WORLD WAR Z 2 are going to have to make things bigger, wider, and crazier to earn that title and top the first one in terms of scope, and Kelly is as interesting a choice to help things along as I could’ve imagined.
I really didn’t have much hope for this sequel actually happening, let alone actually being good, considering the somewhat muted response to the first one in the years since (though it’s hard to argue against a half-a-bil worldwide gross), but damn if my ears didn’t just perk up at the thought of the UTOPIA guy conjuring up horrible, shocking scenarios for Brad Pitt to crowbar and grenade his way out of.
WORLD WAR Z 2 will hopefully bring back that badass IDF agent on June 9th, 2017.