A Topiary
Shane Carruth wrote an enormous science-fiction film, attracted David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh, and made effects tests—yet could not turn its ambition into finance.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Never Born
- Peak stage
- detailed preproduction
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
An unmade science-fiction feature written and planned by Primer director Shane Carruth.
Its two-part narrative involved an adult investigating mysterious patterns and children discovering the ability to construct giant animal-like machines.
Existence timeline
Carruth's collaborators describe the project as entering early preparation.
The ambitious feature gains a public title and financing campaign.
David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh help present the project to financiers.
Carruth produces creature imagery and a sizzle reel.
The full feature does not receive a workable production commitment.
Test imagery appears inside Upstream Color.
Why it ended
Despite prominent supporters, the scale and unusual structure failed to secure financing, and Carruth made Upstream Color instead.
Last confirmed trace
The screenplay circulates online, while a sizzle reel, music and visual-effects tests reveal fragments of the intended film.
What it left behind
A Topiary became a cult screenplay whose imagined scale may be better known than many completed independent features.
How we classified it
The proposed archive unit never reached ordinary public access in the form being documented.
The strongest verified milestone maps to detailed_preproduction under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.