Five years ago, making a web series to get on traditional television was a fool's game. The few web series producers to secure development deals with networks -- from "We Need Girlfriends," "Quarterlife," "Private High School" and "The College Humor Show" -- either never made it to air or didn't last long when they did. But today many more web series have been optioned for TV and made it onto television. Some have even been successful, making it to a second season -- like Comedy Central series "Broad City," which was renewed last night. More series could be coming soon. In the past year hardworking producers like Issa Rae, Ray William Johnson, Benny and Rafi Fine, Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenefeld and have all signed development deals. Now that web production is an established route on the long, hard path to a television series, it's...
- 2/25/2014
- by Aymar Jean Christian
- Indiewire
After researching and teaching web television for over three years, I was ironically accepted as a faculty fellow of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences a few weeks ago. The fellowship was an exploration of traditional television and how it is adapting to the changing landscape of television production. About twenty television professors were accepted in all and all of us were shocked to find that television professionals we met were excited by the changes in the entertainment industry, especially the move to online distribution. The reason: television transcends. Television evolved simultaneously to the technology that displayed it: the Crt. Yet, unlike other mass media, the technology is currently disappearing and television, the form, is remaining. Television is now an application on a screen. While television professionals, whether from old media or new media, are excited by the limitless prospects of television creation, television academics are just starting to understand the value.
- 12/23/2011
- by Guest Author
- Tubefilter.com
Al Thompson has enjoyed a very good year. His digital production company ValDean Entertainment closed pickup deals with all of its active series—including two of them Lenox Avenue and Odessa scoring Bet Networks deals. Now fresh off winning the Syfy “Imagine Greater” honors at Nytvf last month for Odesssa, Thompson is heading to Los Angeles to premiere the drama at the NBCUniversal Short Cuts Film Festival next Wednesday the 26th. (Free tickets to the event are available below.) Cast includes Richard Herd (Star Trek Voyager), Fulvio Cecere (Battlestar Galactica), Skai Jackson (Disney’s Jessie), Clayne Crawford (A&E’s The Glades, Fox’s 24), James De Bello (Cabin Fever) and Al Thompson (The Royal Tenenbaums). In case you wonder just what makes the mind of Al Thompson tick—something we’ve affectionately dubbed the “Al Thompson Hustle“—we tried to get a few pages from his playbook out of him in a recent interview,...
- 10/20/2011
- by Marc Hustvedt
- Tubefilter.com
Online destinations are vying for ad dollars this Upfront season, but they aren’t the only ones courting advertisers with web original programming. Bet today announced its new slate of shows for its 2011 Upfront presentation tonight in New York City. In addition to the Viacom-owned network’s staples - like the Hip Hop Awards and 106 and Park - Bet is adding a handful of web sereis to its roster, many of which were created, written by, and star individuals who Tubefilter readers will find familiar. The shows include: Lenox Avenue - A dramatic web series that tells the story of three male friends in their mid-twenties, who are good dressers and busy navigating the rough terrain of love, relationships and careers. Set in Harlem, this series is produced by Al Thompson’s (Johnny B. Homeless, The Royal Tenenbaums) ValDean Entertainment and features Thompson as Owen and Dorian Missick (Lucky Nember) as Sellars.
- 4/20/2011
- by Joshua Cohen
- Tubefilter.com
The sadist is alive and well in web series drama. Maybe he wasn’t getting enough love on other screens—crowded out by brooding teen vamps? But online is where his dark games seem to run wild. Compulsions went right for it, wasting no time in cutting to office drone Mark’s sadistic side. And the recently launched Dice had no problem with its merciless hero watching someone blow his head off in front of him. So with the premiere of Goon, the latest indie web drama to venture to the dark side, comes what feels like a trend brewing. Just two episodes in, this one is a mystery. Not in the traditional sense, more in the Lost sense where it’s not clear what exactly is going on yet or who we’re going to see. Even the show’s site is deliberately vague in its dishing of the...
- 5/11/2010
- by Marc Hustvedt
- Tubefilter.com
"Dick Gracen, who was Nightwing, is Batman right now. Tim Drake, who was Robin is now Red Robin because he's convinced Batman is still alive, so he's going all over the world trying to find him." This was the topic of conversation when I stepped on the set that fine January evening. Spirits were high and nerds ruled as crew members focused the camera and checked audio levels in the local comic shop that was today's location. Actors and crew alike oogled the merchandise and tried to guess at the prices of some of the rarer items. "I know the price of everything in the store so if you break it, I know how much it costs," the girl behind the counter, who was overseeing things and making sure nothing got out of hand, assured everyone. Ragtag Productions, the team of Hofstra University graduates Angel Acevedo, Brian Amyot, Steven Tsapelas,...
- 1/26/2010
- by Jenni Powell
- Tubefilter.com
The web is rife with buddy comedy. Clark and Michael, Jake and Amir, Derek and Simon, and We Need Girlfriends all combine awkward showbiz, workplace or romantic hi jinks and an angst-ridden, but free-spirited backdrop of young adult life. What’s missing is a female perspective. Aside from a few exceptions, and unless you’re a practicing mother, the internet doesn’t have too many web series or video-centric destination sites for the ladies. Jennifer Cron and Melissa Hunter are doing their part to help the underrepresented sex get some play. Friends and Theatre Majors at Northwestern University, the two Los Angeles natives moved back to Hollywood after graduation to begin the capricious stage of adulthood known as post-collegiate life. Jennifer and Melissa hit the audition circuit, but quickly became frustrated by the traditional roles offered to women and the scarcity of roles offered to women their age. At the same time,...
- 3/9/2009
- by Joshua Cohen
- Tilzy.tv
Casual, meaningless sex is revered with a comic wit in the new 10-part web series Hell Froze Over. Threesomes, dating mishaps, and one-night stands have never been funnier. Well, maybe they were in My Damn Channel’s Wainy Days, but that’s more of a gozno comedy. This Misplaced Planet production, like the classic online original We Need Girlfriends, is firmly grounded in the realm of sitcom. The series explores the sexual exploits of a single woman, Jody and will entertain those with a taste for dry humor and an aversion to chick flicks. Jody (Tracy Clifton) is unapologetic about her promiscuity and determined to prove to her roommate that she can find a decent mate. In an effort to find Mr. Right, the twentysomething year-old comes to the conclusion that she must sift through a pool of undesirable - sometimes psychotic or violent - men she previously rejected. She...
- 2/27/2009
- by Nalea J. Ko
- Tilzy.tv
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...
- 1/27/2009
- by Pat Miller
- Tubefilter.com
We hope everyone has had an exciting and restful holiday. Now it's 2009—a brand new year to show the world what we can do with web television. 2008 will be a tough act to follow. There were so many great shows last year, and the nominations for The Streamys are pouring in. If you aren't already pumped, take a look at Marc Hustvedt's call to arms and get going! This week we have some inspiring picks for you. MoCap, LLC, is going to Spike TV, and We Need Girlfriends is being developed into a pilot for network television. What are you waiting for? Get out there and make the next sitebuster! MoCap, LLC The little-viewed but hilarious series about a budget motion capture studio that "does the mo cap that no one else will do" just announced a deal with Spike TV. With their most popular video on YouTube receiving a meager 17,755 views,...
- 1/7/2009
- by Tubefilter News
- Tubefilter.com
Out of the handful of webshows that have inked TV deals, so far only the sci-fi, fantasy series Sanctuary has actually made it onto television broadcast airwaves. Sci Fi also picked up online original God Inc. in mid-2007 and CBS nabbed We Need Girlfriends later that year, but last I heard both shows are lingering in development purgatory. You can see Atom TV on Comedy Central, but that doesn’t really count. Neither does Quarterlife. Eli’s Dirty Jokes might qualify, but I digress… Now you can add Atomic Wedgie’s Secret Girlfriend to that very short list of online series that have made the jump to TV. Variety reports Comedy Central has greenlight six, 30-minute episodes of the show featuring real girls, all of whom are cute, funny, and absolutely, positively wild about you, the viewer. Creators Jay Rondot and Ross Novie are slated to executive produce the series,...
- 12/18/2008
- by Joshua Cohen
- Tilzy.tv
Sex and the City creator Darren Star has teamed with CBS to develop a comedy based on the Web series We Need Girlfriends.
The network has handed out a script commitment to the project, which would be written by Steven Tsapelas, Angel Acevedo and Brian Amyot, the masterminds behind the original series that has drawn as many as 700,000 views per episode on YouTube during its 11-episode run.
The online Girlfriends chronicles the adventures of Tom (Patrick Cohen), Henry (Seth Kirschner) and Rod (Evan Bass), recent college graduates struggling to understand the complex world of the New York dating scene after they are simultaneously dumped by their long-term college girlfriends.
Star will executive produce Girlfriends for CBS and Sony Pictures TV, with Dennis R. Erdman and Clark Peterson serving as co-exec producers.
It has been a busy development season for Star. He is executive producing the ABC comedy pilot Literary Superstars, starring Jenna Elfman, and has several projects in the works at other broadcast nets, including the one-hour Raffik, from writer Anthony Horowitz, set up at Fox.
The network has handed out a script commitment to the project, which would be written by Steven Tsapelas, Angel Acevedo and Brian Amyot, the masterminds behind the original series that has drawn as many as 700,000 views per episode on YouTube during its 11-episode run.
The online Girlfriends chronicles the adventures of Tom (Patrick Cohen), Henry (Seth Kirschner) and Rod (Evan Bass), recent college graduates struggling to understand the complex world of the New York dating scene after they are simultaneously dumped by their long-term college girlfriends.
Star will executive produce Girlfriends for CBS and Sony Pictures TV, with Dennis R. Erdman and Clark Peterson serving as co-exec producers.
It has been a busy development season for Star. He is executive producing the ABC comedy pilot Literary Superstars, starring Jenna Elfman, and has several projects in the works at other broadcast nets, including the one-hour Raffik, from writer Anthony Horowitz, set up at Fox.
- 11/2/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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