Pursuits

Fox Cancels Utopia, Reality TV's $50 Million Bust

UtopiaPhotograph by Fox Broadcasting Company/Everett Collection
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Fox’s grandiose social experiment is dead. Let the media autopsies begin.

On Sunday, Nov. 2, the producers of Utopia, an ambitious reality showBloomberg Terminal billed as “the biggest social experiment ever televised,” announced that Fox had cancelled the show. Fans hoping for some sort of closure are out of luck. The producers revealed that the episode that aired a few days earlier, on Halloween, would be the last. The 130 robotic cameras filming the utopian compound around the clock and live streaming material to the show’s website have since gone dark.