Spielberg Gets Real for Fox

Spielberg Gets Real for Fox Steven Spielberg's ready to pull a Donald Trump. Mr. Billion-Dollar Box Office is teaming with reality mastermind Mark Burnett for On the Lot, an American Idol-meets-The Apprentice-style Fox reality series that aims to find the next, well, Steven Spielberg. Per a network press release, 16 finalists will be divided into two teams and each group has to produce (and write, and direct, and cast…) a short film each week. Fox says that the contestants will be forced to deal with the pitfalls that any major player could face--creative differences, budgetary problems, deadlines, etc.--but that they will also have access to some high-caliber perks, such as the opportunity to collaborate with Industry insiders and big-name celebs. On the Lot will unfold over two nights a week, with night number one featuring an hourlong "film premiere" episode to screen the teams' work, which will tackle a different genre each week. Night number two (now, where have we heard this one before) will be the "box office" results show. A team of judges will be on hand, but it will be viewers' votes that ultimately decide which Hollywood hopeful is sent back to the drawing board each week. The last aspiring Spielberg, Scorsese, Tarantino or Coppola standing will win a studio development deal with DreamWorks. READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE I think this approach of showing the COMPETITION in progress a la "The Apprentice" would have attracted much better audience numbers for "Project Greenlight." Being someone who loves the moviemaking process, PGL was fascinating to me but the average person cares more about the finished product and seeing it on a movie screen rather than going to a TV version of film school to see how it got made. And PGL never cared to find the real gems that were probably buried under a lot of crap so their finalist rounds, at least as far as writing goes, were more in line with being lucky lottery winners than the end product of winnowing down entries in a good to better to best progression of talent and skill. I don't know how a screenwriting version of Mr. Speilberg's show would work since the writing process isn't exactly visually stimulating re: TV cameras. Maybe have dramatic readings or let the camera be a fly-on-the-wall as real pros rip into the crap? I'm glad that Mr. Speilberg is getting involved in promoting new talent. More heavies in the biz should be reaching out to give a leg up to new people.