Tubefilter News

This is how Twilight should have ended (see above video first). But it didn’t, and we’re left with another chapter delaying the inevitable, leaving us scratching our heads at the thought of an actual long term romance between mortal Bella (Kristen Stewart) and vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson).

The team behind the widely popular How It Should Have Ended series have released their latest animated alternate ending today. Also today comes news that it has inked a long term license and production deal with Starz Digital Media.

HISHE dates back to early 2005, explains co-creator and producer Tina Alexander. “We were watching Flight of the Phoenix and a group of us were talking about the ridiculous ending about how it should have gone,” said Alexander. From there the group, which includes co-creators Daniel Baxter and Tommy Watson, whipped up a number of comedic alt endings to blockbusters like Superman, Lord of the Rings and Transformers.

Starz came calling in the form of Marc DeBevoise, SVP of Digital Media, Business Development & Strategy, in fall of 2008. It would be almost a year until a deal was completed. “We wanted to help them take it to the next level,” said David Katz Starz’ Executive Director of Digital Media. “What we’re tying to do is expand the distribution,” he added noting that HISTHE’s popular YouTube channel and newly revamped website will remain the primary hubs for the show.

Another companion web series coming out of a major TV network today as ABC launches its Grey’s Anatomy companion Seattle Grace: On Call. It premiered tonight 10:00 PM ET, immediately following the latest episode of Grey’s, which featured promo for the new sidekick.

It’s a faux documentary, set at Joe’s Emerald City Bar where seemingly all of the Seattle Grace surgeons frequent to booze it up and make bad decisions. A handful of the lesser known stars from the TV version will appear in the 4-minute episodes, like Joe the Bartender Steven W. Bailey and SG interns Brandon Scott and Gloria Garayua. Italian food brand Bertolli signed on as lead sponsor of the series.

“Our goal with the Web series is to expand the Grey’s universe by offering a unique perspective of the various happenings at Seattle Grace, while paralleling some of the same story lines seen on the show,” said Grey’s creator and executive producer Shonda Rhimes to MediaPost.

Showtime has been having fun with these companion web series this year, like Dexter’s animated origin story Early Cuts and Weeds’ stoner run University of Andy. While Weeds takes a long holiday snoozer until early 2010, Andy Botwin (Justin Kirk) is back with a fresh crop of new classes this week, after its own hiatus since premiering this summer.

The new courses are just in time for the holidays—The Perfect Thanksgiving (above), How to Break Up with Someone, Surviving the Apocalypse, How to Deal with Bullies and How to Tell if You’re Dating a Crazy (below). They still stay simple, with no signs of the rest of the Botwin clan dropping in. We thought at least Doug (Kevin Nealon) would come in for a guest lecture on couch surfing.

New episodes of Andy will be out every two weeks. Now, if only Californication would commission Hank Moody’s musings on how to be TV’s biggest tail chaser.

A web series spoofing a comic based on a web series… that has to be a first. A Comicbook Orange, the popular series for all things comics, released its latest episode today reviewing the new Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog comic form Dark Horse which hit stores today. Host Casey McKinnon crafted a special musical number (why not) to kick off the episode before giving a mixed “3 orange” review of the Dr. H origin story.

The full color 40-page comic, written by Joss Whedon’s brother Zack, is what comic junkies call a one-shot (in japan it’s yomikiri 読み切り), not too unlike the live action series itself which has been teasing fans with talk of a sequel for over a year.

In this One-Shot Wonder, Zack Whedon and artist Joelle Jones (Token) establish how a young, impressionable, but brilliant Dr. Horrible was drawn into a world of crime. Readers are reacquainted with the charming, brawny, crime-fighting superhero extraordinaire Captain Hammer when Dr. Horrible crosses paths with his greatest enemy in an all-out showdown of immeasurable proportions. Special guest appearances include Dr. Horrible’s love interest, Penny; his sidekick, Moist; and a meter man.

Babelgum has picked up exclusive first run distribution rights on Scott Adams’ Dilbert animated cartoon series as well as the New Yorker’s and a handful of others—Bloom County, Michael Fry and T Lewis’ Over the Hedge, Paul Gilligan’s Pooch Café and Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac. The deal is with RingTales, an online distributor of animated cartoons, and adds to Babelgum’s previous library of non-exclusive cartoon clips from the company.

Popular cubicle dweller Dilbert had previously been a major hit on iTunes, where it claimed the #1 podcast spot earlier this summer with over 2 million downloads for the month of July. The new Babelgum deal means it will have first run on new episodes, before its other partners like iTunes, MSN and even Dilbert.com.

The short, under 30-second clips will live on Babelgum Comedy’s Animation sub-channel. Given their bite size lengths and name recognition it’s likely these series will do well on Babelgum’s not too shabby mobile app which makes for fast access to their growing library. Back in July, the site announced it locked exclusive mobile distribution rights on content from celeb-backed comedy hub Funny or Die.

With news last week that Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse officially got the cancellation axe from FOX, there’s all kinds of speculation about what’s next for the captain of the Whedonverse. There’s still talk about Whedon’s digital studio plan, which would include a second season of his web musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

But first up might be something else, especially with Whedon’s The Cabin in the Woods film pushed to 2011. Sci-Fi Wire spotted a casting breakdown for a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer web series in the works. Jane Espenson recently talked to A Comicbook Orange about her writing work on the Buffy Season 8 comic book series, which could come into play in this new project.

Whedon isn’t officially listed on the casting breakdown, though casting director Jeff Shuter (Invincible) is.

Judd Apatow is letting the internet interview him, live, on Funny or Die’s Writers Room series this Wednesday at 12:30 PST. They are taking questions for the famed comedy writer-director (Superbad, Anchorman, Pineapple Express) on Facebook and so far 160 people have submitted their pressing inquests. From the looks of it, this could be worth a new lunchtime browser window. Over/Under on number of Freaks and Geeks questions is 4.

Some highlights:

Would you ever consider making us a good, R-Rated cartoon? Far too few of them. (Jim Moore)

The Three Men and a Baby trilogy will be finishing up with Three Men and a Bride, fans of the trilogy are dying to know if you will be working on this much awaited project? (Dave Hanson)

How come “Walk Hard” tanked so hard? That one was kinda not too shitty. And when I say “not too shitty”, I mean “I could still smell the shit that was ‘Walk Hard’, I just couldn’t see it on-screen.” (Dave Betten)

There is no MPAA for web series (yet), so that leaves sites like us with the job of throwing down the “moderately-NSFW” tag for series like this one. (In this case, headphones at the office should suffice.)

Take a couple of hungry, web savvy NYU Tisch grads and throw them into the scripted web series world and you get a promising looking comedy Ryan & Collin which premieres later this week on the 19th.

The setup of the project is a classic nice guy/bad boy college roommate duo. Ryan (Rob Mor) is the hard working nice guy who’s constantly tempted by his devious roommate Collin (Craig Knowlton)

The four-man 20/20 Pictures team, which includes Mor and Knowlton, are all former NYU film school friends. It’s clear they put a little more polish into this one than most of the college age indies. They even have their one-liner pitch ready at the hip: “If Family Guy had sex with Arrested Development and had a baby.”

But in an ever-crowded field of web series entrants, it’s pretty clear these guys went the the raunchy side to stick out. “The internet is undeniably the next frontier for motion picture story-telling but on it, you’re competing with everything from a sneezing panda to every fetish ever conceived so, to stand out, as filmmakers we felt like we really had to take a bold creative stand,” said producer John Logan Pierson.