The Hollywood Reporter reports on an interesting new project where the fans take the creative seat… of sorts. Fans of Syfy are going to be able vote or even pitch ideas as to how the movie turns out – if there ever was any democratic movie making, this is it. As the communists would say, “four legs good, two legs bad”, and then one wonders how many legs this movie is going to stand on.
And this creature standing on thousands of legs (a centipede?) seems like something that isn’t going to stay upright for too long especially if all the legs want to go in a different direction. After having all the cooks spice the broth the resulting script is going to be transmuted into a 2 hour long movie. I’ve tried something almost like this before, where a group of us would take turns to write a story with the main beats of it decided by committee… and man it was painful to read even halfway through. Hopefully there’d be some sort of editor to keep things in check. Imagine if there’s a 51-49 split to kill some character, and then for the next plot point someone suggests he gets resurrected thanks to faerie dust. Well, you get the drift.
3 stock concepts are available to be voted on from Friday – and they’re as generic as they come. Still, this is a good guide, instead of “hey, have any idea?” which is going to result in option paralysis. I wonder, too, by giving fans full plotting capabilities for this project… wouldn’t this result in a show that they already know the ending too? I know writers can be especially proud of their own work, but it seems like you’re just eliminating most of your market from the get go.
And lastly, while I understand that your fans are an important part of keeping your station alive, listening to them to such a degree is going to prove 1 of 2 things:
1. That the power of the fans can make any station bend to their will
2. That if the movie fails, them fans better stop whinging when a studio does something unpopular
I wonder what they’re aiming at.
