GENRE HACKS: What if they all did it like Amazon?

Friday, May 17, 2013

What if they all did it like Amazon?

For all of you interested in writing TV or developing TV, this is a very interesting development from Roy Price and Amazon.com. What would happen if all networks and premium cable allowed their audiences to choose their pilots? Would that be a good thing? How would you feel if YOUR pilot was chosen by an audience instead of executives and focus groups?

Amazon creates online streaming TV with new production arm

Amazon has recently released 14 new pilot episodes on its website created by its Amazon Studios unit and the e-commerce site wants viewers to choose which previews the company should turn into full-on, season-long shows. The 14 offerings range from well-known Hollywood entities, like the Sony spin-off Zombieland, to lesser-known creations a la the comedy Those Who Can't, which was generated from an online submission entry.

What's the creative process behind these pilots? How did ideas get the green light? How has response been so far? Listen to Roy Price, director of Amazon Studios: HERE

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Sean Hood was an active WGA screenwriter from 1998-2018. Over those two decades he was best known for horror films and swords-and-sandals movies, as well as this blog, Genre Hacks.

After graduating from Brown University with a double major in pure mathematics and studio art, Sean spent several years working in Hollywood as a set dresser, prop assistant and art director working with filmmakers as diverse as James Cameron, David Fincher and David Lynch.

He began writing and directing his own films in 1992 as a founding member of Filmmaker's Alliance. He continued his studies at USC's School of Cinematic Arts, graduating in 1997 with an MFA in production. His student film, The Shy and the Naked, won a grant from the Sloan Foundation. His short film Melancholy Baby won the Los Angeles Short Filmmaking Grant, presented to him by Eastman Kodak at the Directors Guild of America.

After finishing film school, Sean got his "big break" when his first major spec script was purchased by MTV/Paramount in 2000, which led to a deal with Dimension Films. Over the next two decades, while working on genre features such as Halloween: Resurrection and Conan The Barbarian, Sean has returned to USC to teach screenwriting at the John Wells Division of Writing for Screen and Television.

His last major film projects, written in 2017-18, included Rolling in The Deep, a horror movie about lascivious, man-eating mermaids, written for producer J. Todd Harris, director Mary Lambert, and Millennium Films, currently set to film in Malta in the spring of 2020.