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.

Within seconds of beginning my search for where I could watch this six-part UK-based web thriller, it had been compared to not one (Saw) but two (Seven) American movies and not one (24) but two (Lost) American television series. At almost the same time, Girl Number 9 was letting me know it was made specifically for the internet, and unlike anything I had seen before.

Written by James Moran (Doctor Who, Torchwood,Severance) and starring Gareth David-Lloyd (Torchwood), Joe Absolom (Doc Martin, Personal Affairs), and Tracy-Ann Oberman (Doctor Who, Eastenders), the series has a lot of BBC talent to back it up—along with a huge advertising campaign. The Guardian in particular did a very interesting piece that was open-ended: it began its review at episode 1 and then added information as each subsequent episode was released. The author also encouraged its readers to join in the discussion in the comments section, and the dialogue that resulted was often heated but with several extremely valid points about the weaknesses and strengths of the series.

The format of the show itself is an almost unique approach, if not a bit on the transparent side: six episodes running at less than five minutes each were released over a span of six days beginning on October 30th. The show will be viewable for free for 30 days, at which point it will go offline and offer a DVD of the series, which promises to be jam-packed with special features including a behind-the-scenes documentary, commentaries, interviews, script, gallery, trailers and other special features. According to the show’s website, the DVD will also contain “a feature length version”. No word on if this means they originally shot the series as a feature film and then cut it down into a half-hour format, though this seems unlikely since all the press boasts that the show was specifically written with the web in mind.

Needless to say, I’m confused by the show’s seeming intense need to be exclusively for the internet yet making all it’s comparisons to traditional media. The show also does a half-hearted attempt at interactivity with a few in-your-face ARG elements. Within the first minute, the killer is giving you a web address and a number (incidentally, I watched the episodes at the web address he was giving…so I was a bit confused as to what I as a viewer was supposed to do with that information). They track locations using IP address, which is the very first thing any mildly tech-savvy puzzle-solver would instantly try. Basically, I wish that if they had gone for ARG elements, they really would have committed to them and offered the viewers a bit of a challenge.

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.