Sasha Lane Steps Into Rooney Mara’s Old Role in Amazon’s Gillian Flynn Series ‘Utopia’

Once upon a time, David Fincher was going to make a follow-up project with Gillian Flynn to “Gone Girl.” It was an ambitious British series adaptation called “Utopia,” set up at HBO, Gillian Flynn writing the script and Rooney Mara playing the lead role. It was the most anticipated project you had ever heard of especially after “Gone Girl” had put Flynn on the map and dominated the cultural conversation in the fall of 2014, regardless of whether it had much of a shot at Oscar contention, the movie was a minor phenomenon.

READ MORE: David Fincher Explains Why HBO’s ‘Utopia’ Fell Apart

But cut to one year later and Fincher’s relationship with HBO—that could have led to a half-decade or more of Fincher TV projects on HBO—fell apart. HBO ordered it to series, but eventually balked on the pricey, near $90-million budget tag that Fincher had attached to “Utopia,” and he walked away over a few million dollars. With it, Fincher’s 1980s music video show “Videosyncrazy“ and a ’50s set noir project with novelist James Ellroy also died at HBO and one should assume, as he’s gone to Netflix, that relationship is toast (at least for now).

READ MORE: Gillian Flynn’s ‘Utopia’ Is Back & Over At Amazon, But Without Rooney Mara & David Fincher

Last year, it was revealed that Flynn was going forward with “Utopia” without Fincher and had now set up the project at Amazon Studios(who bought the rights back from HBO, so hey, someone buy back that Ellroy thing, will you?). Now, the project has a lead in Sasha Lane, the breakout star of Andrea Arnold’s “American Honey.”

READ MORE: David Fincher’s ‘Utopia’ With Rooney Mara Is Dead At HBO, ‘Videosyncrazy’ Might Be DOA Too

Based on Dennis Kelly‘s British series of the same name, “Utopia” centers on a group of young adults who meet online, discover a bizarre graphic novel that holds mythic conspiracy theories and they find themselves being tracked down by a merciless organization known merely as “The Network.”

“Utopia” will be nine-episodes long and Lane will play Jessica Hyde, who is described as being tough and feral after a life on the run from a mysterious and dangerous group — she believes all the answers about her perplexing life story may be hidden in the graphic novel “Utopia.”

No directors have been announced, but this sounds like more of a traditional TV project where the writer/creator is king and not the filmmaker. Flynn, who is coming off the successful HBO show “Sharp Objects” with Amy Adams will act as showrunner and exec producer.

Sasha Lane also appears in the upcoming “Hellboy” movie and is coming off strong roles in Sundance pictures “The Miseducation of Cameron Post ” and “Hearts Beat Loud.” [THR]