Back in 2013 we reported that the S1 Black Mirror episode, The Entire History Of You, was being picked up for a movie adaptation.
There was a big bidding war, George Clooney went head to head with Robert Downey Jr, and the show’s writer, Jesse Armstrong, presumably got pretty excited.
Skip forward five years and everything has stalled – with Downey Jr letting his option lapse and the project stuck in “development hell”.
“I think it’s now available again so let’s make this interview an advertisement that someone else can option it,” Armstrong told Yahoo Movies UK, sounding a wee bit sad. “It’s not currently being made. It’s in development hell! It’s not progressing but we do [want it made].”
Unfortunately, it’s an all too common story for hundreds of decent sounding ideas. Movie rights to TV shows, newspaper articles and books are often snapped up by Hollywood producers (just to stop someone else getting there first), and nothing ever comes of them.
In this case, it’s a particular shame because The Entire History Of You is a really good episode – with Toby Kebbell playing a guy with a brain implant that let him replay his own memories – and it would have no doubt made for an interesting movie.
Does the fact that it sounds a bit too similar to Cary Fukunaga’s upcoming Maniac have anything to do with it? Either way, if you have a few million and a bit of sway in the film industry, Jesse Armstrong wants to hear from you.
