‘Utopia Falls,’ ‘Dawn’ Bosses on Black Creators Breaking Barriers in Genre Entertainment

variety.com:

When “Utopia Falls” creator R.T. Thorne pitched a sci-fi hip-hop series about a group of teens living in a dystopian future and battling in a performing arts competition called the Exemplar, he knew the concept was an unusual one. “People definitely looked at me weird when I first threw it out there a few years ago, just this idea of science fiction and hip-hop,” Thorne tells Variety. “[But] what was interesting to me, is that even though they didn’t know what to make of it, everybody wanted to understand more.” And the Exemplar competition is just the beginning for Thorne’s story — which is now streaming on Hulu — as the series takes a pivotal turn when a couple of the teen contestants stumble upon a hidden warehouse called “The Archive”