Sharon Stone smiling in MosaicImage via HBO
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Thomas Butt
Published 3 hours ago
Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely passionate about the work of Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and Albert Brooks. His work can be read on Collider and Taste of Cinema. He also writes for his own blog, The Empty Theater, on Substack. He is also a big fan of courtroom dramas and DVD commentary tracks. For Thomas, movie theaters are a second home. A native of Wakefield, MA, he is often found scrolling through the scheduled programming on Turner Classic Movies and making more room for his physical media collection. Thomas habitually increases his watchlist and jumps down a YouTube rabbit hole of archived interviews with directors and actors. He is inspired to write about film to uphold the medium's artistic value and to express his undying love for the art form. Thomas looks to cinema as an outlet to better understand the world, human emotions, and himself.
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At this point, there's nothing Steven Soderbergh won't try. The acclaimed filmmaker has reached the apex of the industry, directing Oscar-winning dramas like Traffic and blockbusters like Ocean's Eleven, but he's most comfortable experimenting with the form or stripping down to a minimalist style. Soderbergh can oscillate between working with George Clooney and Matt Damon with major studio money and filming on a MiniDV camera or iPhone with non-professional actors. Being one of the first auteurs to embrace streaming as a form of distribution, Soderbergh's prolific body of work and genre flexibility indicate an artist willing to swim in uncharted waters and unconventional premises.
Of all his work since returning from his brief retirement in 2013, Mosaic, a six-episode mystery crime series for HBO, remains the most fascinating — if not ill-fated. On the surface, the short-lived 2017-2018 series, which has evaporated from the public consciousness due to the channel's vast library and depth of Soderbergh's filmography, is a familiar crime drama on paper. For those who first engaged with Mosaic as an iOS/Android mobile app and interactive film, you know it captured Soderbergh at the top of his experimental game.
The HBO Miniseries 'Mosaic' Began as a Mobile Interactive Movie
Sharon Stone and Olivia Lake in Steven Soderbergh's 'Mosaic' (2018).Image via HBO
After feeling burned out and dismayed by the studio system, Soderbergh walked away from feature filmmaking. In between Behind the Candlelabra and Logan Lucky, his only project was the Cinemax medical drama The Knick, which ran for 20 episodes across two seasons. Since returning to movies, including the 2025 double-billing of Presence and Black Bag, Soderbergh has still made room for directing television, notably the HBO miniseries Full Circle, created by Men in Black writer Ed Solomon. Where many directors are precious about what they lend their name to, Soderbergh approaches his career with a go-for-broke eagerness to enter the sandbox of classic genres and update storytelling and formalist tropes.
In a long career of audacious swings, Mosaic, starring Sharon Stone, Garrett Hedlund, Frederick Weller, Devin Ratray, Beau Bridges, and Paul Reubens, might just be Soderbergh's most ambitious project to date. Like many of his post-hiatus activities, Soderbergh took a tried-and-true concept in the murder mystery and inverted and upended all its machinations to concoct something unique. With some critics dubious about the merging of video games and movies, Soderbergh and Solomon entered murky waters by telling the story of a murdered children's book author, Olivia Lake (Stone), as an interactive film on a mobile app. Viewers control their own destiny as they attempt to uncover the mystery behind Olivia's killing from the perspective of multiple characters and flashbacks. All together, the entire running time of the interactive film amounted to roughly seven-and-a-half hours of unique material, according to Soderbergh in a previously cited Vulture interview.
Steven Soderbergh Puts an Uncanny Twist on a Murder Mystery in 'Mosaic'
Not long after the launch of the app, Mosaic was streamlined into six hour-long episodes for HBO. Beginning with the timeline before the murder, the series follows Olivia Lake being suited by Joel Hurley (Hedlund), an aspiring artist bartending at an event held at her home, and Eric Neill (Weller), a con artist hired by the lonely author's obsessed neighbor, Michael O'Connor (James Ransone), to obtain her property. Defying his task, Eric drops his scheming act and confesses his love for Olivia, who rejects him after learning about the hoax. When she is found murdered minutes later, this kicks off a puzzling investigation for the police and the audience. While Eric is behind bars for the murder, we suspect that we're being manipulated.
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Posts 1 By Liam Gaughan Oct 19, 2025The decision to re-cut an expansive interactive film — a new take on Clue for the digital age — created an uncanny aura surrounding Mosaic, an effect designed to turn off a large portion of the audience, explaining why the series only lasted one season. Episodes contain awkward cuts that disrupt narrative flow, and the frequent use of close-ups and conversation shots in confined spaces remind viewers of its origins as an iOS/Android app. If Mosaic was initially conceived as a gimmick for smartphones, then the charm doesn't entirely register on cable, as the story feels a little too rote and inert. Without the advent of users engaging in a "choose your own adventure" approach, the murder mystery feels secondary to the real charm of the series, which speaks to the director's singular vision.
'Mosaic' Reflects Steven Soderbergh's Recent Experimental and Subversive Work
Sharon Stone in Steven Soderbergh's 'Mosaic'Image via HBO
Steven Soderbergh has stripped himself of the weighty pretentiousness that comes with a big-named, Oscar-winning director. Rather than continuing down the path of prestigious dramas like Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Erin Brockovich, he has relished the opportunity to play it loose with genre and formal exercises. This is not to suggest that he is a lacking cinematic visionary, as Mosaic proves that he is consistently tapping into a level of craft that no filmmaker is even aspiring to reach. Like his feature films, Unsane and High Flying Bird, Mosaic was shot on an iPhone, giving Soderbergh more fluidity when setting up dynamic shots. The canted angles and smooth tracking shots are the product of the flexibility offered by a device a quarter of the size of the traditional camera used for major productions.
In other filmmakers' hands, shooting on an iPhone would look cheap and flat, but Soderbergh uses his unconventional form of photography to capture a look that doesn't mimic the aesthetic of traditional television, but rather, it reflects the current climate. Each setting in Mosaic has a chilling, icy cloud hanging over it, complementing the sterile nature of everyday life in a world consumed by digital technology. This is matched by the equally emotionally-distant manner of speaking between characters, particularly by Sharon Stone, who gives one of her finest performances to date. The combination of the hazy color palette and muted dramatic expression of serious predicaments forces the viewer to question the reality presented on the screen — an ideal sensation for a murder mystery.
Steven Soderbergh's recent output promises one thing, only to offer something less commercially appealing but ultimately more nuanced. High Flying Bird is not about the NBA, but rather, the power dynamics between employees and employers; Black Bag, on the other hand, uses the trappings of a spy thriller to discuss marital affairs. The beauty of Mosaic, which deserves a second shot from viewers who bailed ship, is that it focuses on the thorny relationships between surrogate mothers, sons, and brothers with shared interests but varying ways of realizing their goals. Mosaic, like many of Soderbergh's projects, came and went without much fanfare, but time will be kind to anything this formally inventive.
Mosaic
Like TV-MA Drama Crime Mystery Release Date 2018 - 2017 Network HBO Writers Ed SolomonCast
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Frederick Weller
Eric Neill
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Jennifer Ferrin
Petra Neill
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Paul Reubens
JC Schiffer
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Sharon Stone
Olivia Lake
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