Project Greenlight Season 3 debuts tonight on Bravo, at 9pm EST, 8 pm CST. It also reruns in virtual perpetuity, for anyone who might miss an episode. This season, they’re making a horror film. Wes Craven will be involved in the selection of the screenplay (along with Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Chris Moore), and will executive produce the winning film.
I think moving into a genre competition is a good idea for the show. Last season’s selection of The Battle of Shaker Heights never moved me enough to want to see the movie, and while the first season was good for showing more of the sausage-making process of shooting a movie, Stolen Summer wasn’t all that compelling to me either. Horror’s a pretty hot commodity right now, so I think hopes are higher for having some decent box office when the movie’s finally released, and I think Wes Craven needs something sort of fun to do after the debacle of making Cursed.
Anyone else planning to watch?
I think I’m kind of done with the whole series. Wasn’t the whole premise supposed to be that Hollywood plays things too safe, too concerned with the bottom line. Change the paradigm!
So what did they do? Picked safe scripts, told them to make a movie on a shoestring, then wondered what went wrong.
I’ll probably check it out. I haven’t watched any of the previous seasons, but I love movies and I’m interested in (though I know fairly little about) the production process.
How do they start the season? Will they already have picked the screenplay they are going to use? How much of a presence are Damon and Affleck throughout the season? Is there a standard budget they are given for production? Is there a guaranteed screen run of the movie after its finished, or do they have to shop it around after it debuts. I’m guessing they don’t show us the finished film on television at the end of the series, right?
We don’t see the finished film on the program; basically, you can view the series as one long promotional gambit for the eventual premiere of the film. In the first season, we saw Stolen Summer screen at Sundance, so we’ll probably see a bunch of that kind of thing this season as they shop the picture.
They’ll show several finalists for directors and writers, and we’ll see the executive producers’ selection process; before Affleck went to rehab, it was a nonstop smoking and drinking session with lots of Sam Adams (as Affleck was at the time a spokesman for the product). But if you want to spoil yourself, the winners have already been chosen, and the film is post-production, I think.