Acclaimed auteur David Fincher (Gone Girl, The Social Network, Fight Club) will be no doubt drawing on his real-life experience in the music-video industry — a time during which he created clips for the likes of Madonna, Rick Springfield, Billy Idol, Paula Abdul and many more — for his newest gig as director of an impending comedy series for HBO.
The news comes hot on the heels of the announcement from the studio that it would also be picking up Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese's eagerly awaited pilot to full series, putting the channel in a strong position in the new year as far as music-based properties are concerned.
Fincher's series, Living On Video, is set to be a half-hour-long comedy about the music-video industry in Los Angeles in the early to mid-1980s. As Deadline reports, the show centres on protagonist Bobby, a college dropout with big directorial dreams that finds himself less on the A-list than on the PA list, at a local video production house.
The show is tipped to be akin to former HBO drawcard Entourage in structure as Bobby is contradictively pulled deeper into the shallow end of the biz, while Fincher shouldn't have any problems as far as authenticity is concerned; he spent a chunk of the '80s as a prolific music-video director, and still mans the musical camera on occasion to this day, nabbing the Grammy for Best Music Video twice in his storied career — once in 1995 for his work on the Rolling Stones' Love Is Strong, and again in 2013 for Suit & Tie by Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z, a clip that also nabbed him an MTV Video Music Award.
Living On Video is yet to be cast, but the pilot has been greenlit by HBO, though — as with Jagger and Scorsese's project — we won't know if it will be picked up to full series until the project all comes together a little more. Finch's developmental partners for the show, Rich Wilkes and Bob Stevenson, will serve as writers.
