David Fincher's Utopia adaptation in limbo over budget issues

Director David Fincher's planned TV adaptation of British series Utopia has been plunged into jeopardy amid rumors of budgeting issues.

The filmmaker reunited with his Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn to pen the new version of the hit drama, which was set to star his The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo leading lady Rooney Mara.

However, reports suggest the project is in limbo as Fincher battles over finances with bosses at HBO, the network which ordered Utopia straight to series last year (14), while the show's cast has since been released from their contracts, according to Deadline.com.

HBO programming president Michael Lombardo tells The Hollywood Reporter, "We're at that moment, trying to figure out if there is a path forward or not for Utopia."

It's not the only Fincher/HBO collaboration in trouble - network executives are also dealing with issues regarding the director's other TV endeavor, Video Synchronicity.

Production on that series, a 1980s music video comedy, came to a halt in June (15), and Lombardo admits they are keen to make script changes to the episodes already shot, although Fincher's busy schedule has yet to allow them to rework the story.

Insisting Video Synchronicity "isn't dead", Lombardo adds, "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 project (Utopia). (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... There's too much good stuff for us not to figure it out. We're going to figure it out."