IP Democracy: Hollywood's Fertile Fishing Grounds: The Web

The New York Times’ John Clark has this interesting trend piece today on how Hollywood is taking its cue from the Internet, both in terms of finding new talent in the fresh crop of innovative vcasters and listening to web audiences for script suggestions.

One online filmmaker, producer of the viral video MySpace: The Movie, David Lehre, became a hot Hollywood target when his 11-minute movie turned into an Internet phenonmenon. Hollywood has a lot to fear from web-based entertainment.

Some people say that the film industry has more to fear than just being late to the party. If the Net begins spawning films - and not simply helping to market or deliver them, as has happened to date - studios’ grip on the business of putting pictures on screens may be challenged.

“Their nightmare is a direct feed from moviemaker to audience,” said Walter Kirn, a frequent contributor to The New York Times who has been serializing his novel “The Unbinding” on www.slate.com and saw one of his other novels, “Thumbsucker,” adapted to the big screen. “Their only trump cards are that they are pools of capital for making expensive things. Otherwise they are cut out of the action.”

Not only are the studios signing up web film makers to deals, but they’re also, at least in the case of “Snakes on a Plane,” which has become a cultural phenomenon based on its web previews, rewritten scripts based on Internet feedback.

Yet Web users have already shown that they can bend a movie to their tastes. The most obvious instance has been New Line Cinema’s coming film “Snakes on a Plane,” which was the subject of endless Internet interest, mostly spoofing the title and its self-evident premise. New Line decided to play to this audience by incorporating some of its ideas, requiring a week of reshoots and a change in ratings from PG-13 to R.

It’s not clear if Hollywood can harness all this creative energy, however. Moreover, it’s not clear that web-based videos will really siphon away some of the studios’ lucre.

Yet Mr. Kirn insisted that the medium would leave a deep imprint on any entertainment that it generates. “The Net is a self-consciously anti-authoritarian audience,” he said. “They are spit-ballers, defacers, vandals, skeptics. It’s a class without a teacher. The movies that will succeed on it will have those properties.”

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on July 23, 2006 9:58 AM to IP Democracy