David Fincher Directed Five Episodes of an HBO Series That We’ll Never See

It was announced that David Fincher would be returning to TV with a new series with HBO. Despite the constant name changes (Living in Video, Video Synchronicity, and, now, Videosyncrazy), the production seemed to be running smoothly… until HBO made the decision to pull the plug after seeing some of the completed work.

Videosyncrazy is a 1983-set half-hour comedy that follows a college dropout who dreams of making a sci-fi epic but eventually ends up shooting music videos instead. Staring Charlie Rowe, Sam Page, Jason Flemyng, Kerry Condon, Elizabeth Lail, Corbin Bernsen, and Paz Vega, that series would be one that many working filmmakers can relate to since the path to big-budget features isn’t an easy one.

Fincher, who has created award-winning TV series like House of Cards, Netflix’s Mindhunter, and Love, Death & Robots, directed multiple episodes of the show, and he was working fast. According to IndieWire, the production was on its fourth or fifth episode when HBO saw the completed work and pulled the plug on production.

So what happened?

HBO’s programming president at the time, Michael Lombardo, told THR, “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.”

With the series almost halfway filmed, Fincher seemed determined to finish this project and asked for more time to adjust the scripts and creative direction to align with what HBO is expecting from the show. However, the project was never finished and was lost to history.

‘Videosyncrazy’ Joins the Dozen of Other Unfinished Fincher Projects

Videosyncrazy joined the dozens of other David Fincher projects that never made it out of Fincher’s Development Hell. Videosyncrazy co-writer, Rich Wilkes, has a theory about why so many of Fincher’s projects get lost.

“He puts a strong differentiation between the creative and the financial,” Wilkes said to The Ringer. “One of the things that he told me about one of his projects that had blown up was that the studio said, ‘We need to talk about the movie before we start shooting it.’ David said, ‘All right, you have a choice. You can either talk to me about the script, or you can talk to me about the budget. But you can’t talk to me about both. Because if you have creative notes on the script, fine. We’ll deal with those. But you can’t nitpick on both ends. And if you want to talk budget, then fine. We’ll figure out a way to bring it down.’”

Fincher is a busy creative, and it is hard to juggle so many projects at one time. It’s not bizarre to discover that many of Fincher’s ideas never materialize into something for fans of his to enjoy. For one thing, his projects are expensive, and streaming services, the companies who are mostly in charge of TV at this time, are not comfortable spending so much on a project that doesn’t get enough views to satisfy executives. This is what happened to Mindhunter, and it seems to be what happens with many of Fincher’s other projects, including Videosyncrazy.

While we will never see Fincher’s almost-completed HBO project, we can assume that many other great projects will come from Fincher in the future.