by Lesley Goldberg on January 28th, 2009
For those who have wondered what happened to Mario and the Princess and other classic video game characters from the 1980s, JustForLaughs.com has your answer: They’re trapped “in the futuristic online cyberspace also known as the Internet” in Player Haters, a new web series that debuted Monday.
Forced to fight their way out of the Internet against other classic video game characters, Player Haters was created by animated web series outfit CU Studios (Clock Suckers, Kung Fu Karl) and is set for a six-episode Season 1, with new installments bowing every three weeks, JFL’s Jenny Lu said. “It will complement the schedule of our ‘Lost’ parodies series.” (For more on the Lost Parodies see our coverage of The Fine Bros deal with JustForLaughs).
Lu said voice cast of Player Haters is the same as the portal’s Clock Suckers: Mike Parker, Andy Parker, Michael William, Hollie Bertram and Jason Kamen.
by Julie Wolfson on January 28th, 2009
Lorin Wertheimer and Kristiina Hackel have many stories to tell. Their character and dialogue driven web series, Speedie Date for Strike.TV, is the perfect forum to share these tales of people looking for love. Tubefilter asked them about creating the show, their thoughts on relationships, and what dating horror stories they will tackle next.
Tubefilter: How did you come up with the idea for Speedie Date?
Lorin Wertheimer: Eight years ago, my agents wanted a short play as a writing sample. Brainstorming, my mind turned to the coffee shop I had been in a few months earlier, when I had watched a speed dating event (I had no idea what I was witnessing). That short play became the basis for a full length play, which became a low budget feature Kris and I thought we would produce. When a group of WGA members put together Strike.TV and put out a call for web series, Speedie Date seemed a perfect fit. I took the twenty characters from the screenplay, borrowed some of their interactions, and generated a lot of new material.
by Tubefilter News on January 27th, 2009
Just a quick note to all of you out here in Las Vegas for the National Association of Television Program Executives Market & Conference (NATPE) that we’re hosting a mini-meetup at eyecandy sound lounge & bar located in the center of Mandalay Bay’s casino floor. We’re inviting all digital and new media folks to join us for cocktails and networking after the Digital Briefings/Industry Insight program on Wednesday. Look for the Vegas appropriate attention-grabbing Tubefilter “Have you been cheating on your TV?” t-shirts.
And for those of you in LA next week, remember we have the February Hollywood Web Television Meetup at maniaTV that is sure to blow the roof off.
by Joe Eddy on January 27th, 2009
NSFW. Not Safe For Work. Those four little letters are like music to my ears. It’s quite possibly my favorite acronym next to WWJD. Any web content prefaced by those magic consonants is almost instant gold. Or instantly disturbing. The Stagg Party and Shot By Kern are a little from column A and a little [...]
by Drew Baldwin on January 27th, 2009
Spike TV has ordered 11 episodes of James Gunn’s PG Porn, whose pilot episode ‘Nailing Your Wife’ has garnered over 1.7 million views since its debut on October 8 (200,000 of which were in the first 24 hours). The pilot starred Dr. Horrible’s Nathan Fillion and adult entertainment actress Aria Giovanni, and generated over 1 million views within five days. The 12 episode season will feature a new episode each month, beginning with January’s ‘Roadside Ass-sistance’ (above), featuring adult entertainment star Sasha Grey.
The project is produced by The Good Boys—Scooby-Doo auteur James Gunn and brothers Brian and Sean (Gilmore Girls), in conjunction with Safran Digital Group, and is aimed at people who enjoy everything about porn, except the sex.
by Michael Shaw on January 27th, 2009
Flash Sports Tonight is indeed, as its subhead advertises, “Sport Comedy on Steroids.” The question: is imitation or, in this case hostile skewering, the best way to entertain fratacular sports fans? And does it matter? Flash Sports starts by taking ESPN’s blocky fonts (and pastiches some of their classic sportscasting schtick), adding a little South [...]
by Pat Miller on January 27th, 2009
Here’s To Productions has released a pilot episode for their new series Graduates, and it is good. Thirty minutes of good. In fact unlike the short form episodes favored by most web series studios, they’ve got a full half-hour TV-length pilot out.
The show stars Josh Ruben, David Futernick and Steve LaChioma (We Need Girlfriends) as John, Cameron, and Gus: a trio of grad students who are too old to party like the undergrads but too young to resist trying. Graduates takes inspiration from college classics like Old School but turns up the responsibility a notch; while booze, sex, bodily excretions, and the cops are still staples of the plot, the characters also have to juggle their duties as grad students and TAs. When John (Ruben) is forced to navigate around a death in the faculty, a suicidal dean, a deliciously douchebaggy professor (Evan Young, played by Daniel Shafer), and bookishly cute Sarah Ferrel (played by Jo Armeniox), he enlists the help of Cameron (Futernick), who is busy enough fending off the advances of one of his female students (Marisol, played by Rachel Wood) and Gus (LaChioma) who is trying to make up for lost undergrad partying and a broken heart.
Paul Gulyas, one third of the writing-producing trio (Jorge Gonzalez III and Patrick Beck comprise the other two) and HBO Lab veteran was on hand to answer a few questions:
by Robert Spuhler on January 26th, 2009
A busy January continues for Strike.TV with the debut of two more shows, both a bit off the beaten path of standard web fare. Dangerous Women, which premiered January 22nd, and Fusion, debuting today, both take up residence far away from three-minute comedy sketches and twenty-something angst.
Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker and Theresa Tilly, the three female leads from Sam Raimi’s 1981 camp-horror classic The Evil Dead, star in Dangerous Women as suburban housewives, though despite a long voice-over introduction in episode one, this trio seems to live a long way from Wisteria Lane. The first episode is nearly all expository information, until a shadowy figure is seen behind Sandweiss in the final scene. The multi-genre series from writer-producer David O’Malley and director Lee Miller claims to be “part hyper-drama, with tantalizing doses of horror, suspense, satire, soap opera, fantasy and even sci-fi.”
Fusion, meanwhile, sets up an X-Files-like pairing in the 12-minute first episode – if Mulder was a mutant of some sort and Scully could see people’s past by touching them. The series is created and written by Richard Manning, who co-created Beyond Reality for the USA Network and has worked on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Farscape, among others.
