Sam Esmail’s years-in-the making adaptation of Fritz Lang’s classic 1927 sci-fi film “Metropolis” has been permanently shut down due to labor unrest against the background of economic headwinds.
The big-budget UCP [Universal Content Productions] series for Apple TV+, which had been prepping in Australia, has permanently shut down. The crew was just notified that the ambitious project will not move forward with production, which had been targeting a summer start.
UCP confirmed to Deadline that Metropolis has been scrapped. “Push costs and uncertainty related to the ongoing strike led to this difficult decision,” a rep for the studio said.
Metropolis had been in limbo for the past seven weeks. Since production drafts of the scripts for the large-scope, special effects-heavy series had not been finished before the May 2 start of the writers strike, that delayed setting budgets and other key elements of pre-production.
Because of the timing, UCP was faced with rising costs related to pushing the start of production, building and holding expansive stages, labor an VFX work — while not knowing when filming could begin due to the writers strike (and the prospect of a potential SAG-AFTRA strike). After evaluating the money spent so far and the risk of going forward, UCP opted to not proceed with the series and notified their partners at Apple TV+.
The filming was to take place in the state of Victoria where it was projected to create nearly 4,000 jobs, making use of one of the world’s largest ‘virtual production’ infrastructures, according to the April 2022 announcement.
MacDailyNews Take: Horrible news. Hopefully, Esmail can revive Metropolis with UCP or another production compnay – and for Apple TV+ – sometime in the future!
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The post Apple TV+ series ‘Metropolis’ permanently shut down appeared first on MacDailyNews.
