January 9, 2020: Utopia Falls

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January 9, 2020: Utopia Falls

Back in April of last year, I was invited to attend an event hosted by the Director’s Guild of Canada. The aim of the evening was to connect showrunners and directors in a speed-dating-like setting. Prior to the date, I was forwarded a list of 200+ directors and instructed to choose six. Then, on the night, I met with each of my chosen directors for a total of 10 minutes each. It was fun and I did, in fact, make some great connections. But there was one director who I met on the night that wasn’t on my list. I was introduced to RT Thorne through a mutual friend, former Stargate producer Alan McCullough, during some downtime between meetings. He was very complementary about Dark Matter, so I suggested we simply meet up later that week.

A few days later, over a two hour lunch, RT filled me in on the ambitious series he was planning to pitch – a far future, post-apocalyptic sci-fi series that would incorporate music, performances, and an underlying theme related to discovery, social change, and youth empowerment. Oh, and Hip Hop. He was very passionate about the project, and that passion, I felt, would serve him well. But without a pilot script to accompany the series overview he had put together, I assumed a sale would be a lofty prospect.

So imagine my surprise weeks later when RT phoned me up to tell me he had sold the show. They had a 10 episode first season order and were looking for a showrunner. I wished him luck but couldn’t really think of anyone who might be a good fit. But RT wasn’t looking for recommendations. He was looking to me. My response was: “I’m not Hip Hop. I’m sci-fi.” And he countered: “I’M hip hop. You handle the sci-fi.”

In the end, I was convinced to meet with the production company, Sonar Entertainment, that was in the process of interviewing for the position. To be honest, when I went in, it wasn’t with the intention of pitching myself. I went in out of respect for RT who asked me to sit down and talk about the project. So I did. And I was brutally honest. I told them what I loved about what they had, but also made it very clear where I felt the problems lay.

The following week, I received a call from my agent informing me that I’d been offered the showrunning position. I was flattered, but didn’t think I was the right fit for the show. And there were still some issues that I felt needed to be addressed. My agent asked me how I would address the issues. So I told him. I wanted to co-write the pilot with the series creator RT to establish the world and these characters with him. And I wanted to write the finale which would, no doubt, require a fair amount of narrative juggling as our various stories would dovetail. I also wanted my Dark Matter team backing me up, key positions like Production Designer (Ian Brock), Line Producer (Robbie David), and On Set Producer (Ivon Bartok), as well as most of the old crew.

I got them.

RT and I spent the month of August breaking the world, the characters, the relationships, broadstroking the various character and story arcs, and then, in October, we convened the writers’ room. Over the course of five weeks, we world-built and broke all ten of the show’s first season episodes.

Prep on the series started in February and we rolled into production in March.

It was a very different experience from my time on Stargate and Dark Matter, but rewarding nonetheless. I got to work with some incredible people – a terrific cast made up of young up-and-comers as well as more seasoned veterans, new faces on the crew, casting director Stephanie Gorin, VFX Supervisor Greg Behranes and his team, Post-Production Supervisor Katherine Hul and HER team, as well as our point people at Sonar – Andrea Gorfolova, Ashley Rite, and Marc Kell Whitehead. And then, of course, there were the talents of Music Supervisor David Hayman, Composer Nikhil Seetharam, Music Producer Boi-1da, choreographer Tanisha Scott, Snoop Dogg (as the voice of our A.I.!), and the man himself – RT Thorne.

Fair to say that a good time was had by all.