#Utopia book gillian flynn serial
#Utopia book gillian flynn Offline
#Utopia book gillian flynn series

The show’s heroes are strangers who meet on the internet by virtue of their shared obsession with an obscure, out-of-print graphic novel, and the audience is asked to believe that these characters never know what the others look like until they meet in real life.įlynn’s involvement in “Utopia” originated with a decidedly offline adventure: an impromptu road trip in the fall of 2013. In the pilot’s opening scene, the titular comic strip is discovered as a pile of dusty pages rotting away in an abandoned house. “Every time I post something, I get this nervous feeling,” she said, “like, have I given away too much?” (For this interview, her publicist declined a video call on her behalf.)Ĭhanneling this digital reticence into “Utopia,” Flynn took her cues from “all those ’70s paranoia thrillers that came out post-Watergate: ‘Parallax View’ and ‘Marathon Man.’”Īs a result, the world these characters occupy can appear anachronistically analog. She’s not very online, for instance she has the requisite Twitter account, but she said she uses it only sporadically, “in streaks,” which is believable if you consider that 25,000 followers seems somewhat low for one of the most recognizable names in contemporary publishing. In “Utopia,” that anxiety has simply mushroom-clouded into a full-blown global conspiracy.įlynn herself is a little paranoid. “Utopia” isn’t Flynn’s first foray into on-screen storytelling - she wrote the 2014 film adaptation of “Gone Girl” and was in the writers’ room for HBO’s 2018 miniseries version of “Sharp Objects.” And despite the surface departures, “Utopia” is perhaps not all that different in theme from her earlier so-called domestic thrillers - a term she wishes would “be banished from the face of the earth,” she said, used as it is mostly to “denigrate an entire group of writers because we’re women.” Anxieties made realĪlthough her lens has widened beyond the intimacies of marriage and the home, paranoia and unreliable narration have remained constant threads throughout Flynn’s work. Kevin Christie, a big pharma executive played by John Cusack) whole cloth. Instead, she approached Kelly’s original as a “beautiful DNA,” watching it once through and then freestyling from there, even creating entirely new characters (like Dr. “I’m not a fan of remaking something just because the original was really cool,” Flynn said in a telephone interview in early September from her home in Chicago.

#Utopia book gillian flynn series

That “Utopia” is as mischievous and gutsy in spirit as the author herself makes sense although Flynn adapted the episodes from Dennis Kelly’s 2013-14 British series of the same name, she ultimately made the story all her own. “People tend to imagine Gill as somebody who has these constant sinister thoughts about things and revels in that,” said David Fincher, the filmmaker who has served as a mentor during Flynn’s transition to the screen. Beneath the dark and twisted novels that have made her a wildly successful author is a lighthearted, thrill-seeking conspiracy theorist with a general distrust of the digital era.

#Utopia book gillian flynn serial

Comics-like TV serial might seem out of left field for a novelist best known for writing about “damaged, up women,” as she described it, the series is in many ways more reflective of the real Flynn.

Its release during an actual pandemic is coincidental, but the quixotic, larger-than-life tone is exactly what Flynn, who has been working on the story off and on for seven years, envisioned. Keep this in mind as you watch “Utopia,” the pulpy action thriller that marks Flynn’s debut as a television showrunner, after making her name writing psychological page-turners like “Gone Girl” and “Sharp Objects.” Now streaming on Amazon, the show is a rollicking, Dickensian adventure story about a troupe of wide-eyed comic book nerds who think a long lost strip contains the keys to saving humanity from an impending deadly virus. Her father, a film professor and an avid comic book collector, would spend weekends taking her to flea markets and garage sales, explaining the various eras and artists she should know, which strip was loosely based on a Ray Bradbury story, and so on. Gillian Flynn grew up surrounded by comics. (Lawrence Agyei/The New York Times) Photo: LAWRENCE AGYEI, STR / NYT With ?’Utopia,?“ the best-selling novelist makes her debut as a TV showrunner, but anyone who knows her from ?’Gone Girl?“ or ?’Sharp Objects?“ might be surprised by what they see. Author Gillian Flynn at her home in Chicago, Sept.