Welcome to my message board.
New member registration has been disabled due to heavy spammer activity. If you'd like to join the board, please email me at MaxDevore at hotmail dot com.
New member registration has been disabled due to heavy spammer activity. If you'd like to join the board, please email me at MaxDevore at hotmail dot com.
Haven: Colorado Kid on TV
According to Variety, E1 Entertainment has committed to 13 hour-long episodes adapting Stephen King’s novella The Colorado Kid into a television series called Haven.
Scott Shepherd will serve as showrunner and exec produce with Lloyd Segan and Shawn Piller, all three of whom were exec producers on USA Network's version of The Dead Zone.
Two more Dead Zone alumni, Sam Ernst and Jim Dunn, are writing the pilot and will also serve as exec producers.
The report describes the project as, “centers on a spooky town in Maine where cursed folk live normal lives in exile. When those curses start returning, FBI agent Audrey Parker is brought in to keep those supernatural forces at bay — while trying to unravel the mysteries of Haven.”
E1 is in advanced talks with several European broadcast partners to sign on and help finance the show. After securing an international partner, the company will turn its attention to finding U.S. and Canadian broadcasters.
Scott Shepherd will serve as showrunner and exec produce with Lloyd Segan and Shawn Piller, all three of whom were exec producers on USA Network's version of The Dead Zone.
Two more Dead Zone alumni, Sam Ernst and Jim Dunn, are writing the pilot and will also serve as exec producers.
The report describes the project as, “centers on a spooky town in Maine where cursed folk live normal lives in exile. When those curses start returning, FBI agent Audrey Parker is brought in to keep those supernatural forces at bay — while trying to unravel the mysteries of Haven.”
E1 is in advanced talks with several European broadcast partners to sign on and help finance the show. After securing an international partner, the company will turn its attention to finding U.S. and Canadian broadcasters.
Comments
John
Lilja
John
In the case of "Haven," E1 Entertainment is behind the show -- based on the King novella "The Colorado Kid" -- and will produce 13 episodes (Daily Variety, Sept. 28). Universal has acquired exclusive pay TV rights across the globe except for the U.S., Canada and Scandinavia, where distribution is still being sought.
The answer has finally come: U.S. television studios.
In a deal that will be announced today in Cannes, France, Mr. King has partnered with Canadian television producer E1 Entertainment Inc. to make his latest creation, a television series titled Haven, based on his best-selling novella The Colorado Kid.
It is a deal that shatters the conventions of big-budget television productions. Rather than take his concept directly to a Hollywood studio, the author has specifically gone outside of the U.S. in order to retain more creative control over how the series is made.
When complete, Haven will be offered up to networks to buy, but the author is strategically looking to avoid the studio formula of producing a pilot episode, then hoping it generates enough interest to be picked up for a whole season. Instead, Toronto-based E1 will make an entire season - 13 one-hour episodes - before it is shopped to broadcasters in several countries, including the U.S.
"He had his reasons. He might have been disillusioned a little with the development process in the U.S.," Peter Emerson, president of E1's television division, said of Mr. King's decision to partner with the Canadian company.
"He wants to be able to do it without putting it through a studio that's going to pay 100 per cent of it and consequently have that control. ... That created a unique problem for us, because that's not normally how the business works. Normally you get the U.S. studios involved first and then sell internationally."
Mr. King is not commenting on the deal. However, the author is said to have been upset with the treatment of some of his work on television and in films, and also wants to retain a greater share of the proceeds from Haven than he would if the rights were bought by a studio.
The concept of making a complete season is outside the norm for the big TV studios, which want to limit their financial risk if a show stumbles in its first few episodes. However, the full-season model has been increasingly used by premium cable networks, such as HBO and Showtime, and other cable outlets to develop more complete storylines.
Mr. King, who has sold more than 300 million horror novels in his career, began talking to E1 last year when he decided to adapt The Colorado Kid to television. The story is based on the cursed residents of a small town in Maine. E1 was initially approached by Mr. King's agent, Los Angeles-based Creative Artists Agency, based on its past work making shows for U.S. and Canadian networks.
The company has helped make Hung for HBO, The Bridge for CBS and CTV, and Copper for ABC and Global Television. To secure the financing needed to make a TV series that is network quality, E1 needed a partner to help it foot the bill of more than $2-million (U.S.) an episode for Haven.
For that, E1 turned to the international arm of NBC's production studio, Universal Networks International. In exchange for putting up some of the production budget, Universal will get the rights to show Haven on pay-television channels outside North America and Scandinavia. E1 is free to sell the show in North America, noting that it will likely end up on science fiction channels on cable. Though Universal is connected to NBC in the U.S., the network has no claim over Mr. King's series.
The U.S. studio model has been in flux since the Hollywood writer's strike two years ago forced the major networks to look beyond heir own operations for new shows. Roma Khanna, president of Universal's international operations, said the deal is a nod to the increasing quality of Canadian productions and a sign of the shift in the U.S. market.
"It says a lot of the production world that we're in now, to think outside the traditional U.S. studio system," said Ms. Khanna, a former executive with CHUM Ltd. in Toronto who moved to Universal's London office three years ago.
>>> Globe & Mail
E1 is the studio producing and distributing "Haven."
Deal was announced by Syfy original content exec VP (and Universal Cable original content co-head) Mark Stern, as well as E1 TV group CEO John Morayniss.
"Haven" centers on a spooky town in Maine where cursed folk live normal lives in exile. When those curses start returning, FBI agent Audrey Parker is brought in to keep those supernatural forces at bay -- while trying to unravel the mysteries of Haven.
Scott Shepherd is the showrunner and will exec produce with Lloyd Segan and Shawn Piller. Shepherd, Segan and Piller were all exec producers on "The Dead Zone," which ran for six seasons and went off the air in 2008.
Sam Ernst and Jim Dunn are writing the pilot and will also serve as exec producers. E1's Morayniss and Noreen Halpern are exec producers as well.
"'Haven' is the quintessential Stephen King town, full of complex, yet identifiable, characters and compelling supernatural situations," Stern said. "Sam and Jim wrote a great pilot."
Morayniss pointed out that E1 helped orchestrate the first-ever partnership between Syfy in the U.S. and its international pay channels. Company is still shopping other international rights to "Haven."
My guess: Absolutely none.
HOWE: I think we’re very excited about Haven. We've always wanted to work with Stephen King on a series. You know, his miniseries' that we have in our library have always done well for us. He’s obviously a flagship name in the business.
I think the opportunity around Haven is it’s very significant. I think it’s a very cool concept. I think it’s very relevant to today. The characters and the situation. I've only read one script, the pilot script, and it’s very impressive.
I think it has all of the attributes that we want in any series. It has characters that you can relate to, it’s set in the here and now. It has an underlying mystique and intrigue and suspense, and it tackles subjects which I think are going to be pretty diverse on a week to week basis. It has a lot of elements that we’re really excited about.
THE DEADBOLT: You have producers from The Dead Zone. That was intentional, I guess?
HOWE: I think we wanted to obviously put the people on the show that we really knew could help us figure it out. It’s an exciting concept. I think Stephen King is excited about it. I'm not sure how involved he can be given all of his other commitments. But it’s a very unique concept and I think we’re excited to see where we can take it.
It’s also, interestingly, our first kind of international initiative. I think this is potentially a game changer for Syfy. There are fifty Syfy networks now around the globe. With that comes economies of scale around program production and marketing and distribution and scheduling and all the rest of it. I think Haven will be our first co-production with our international sister channels and we’re looking to do more of that in the future.
>>> Source
Based on the Stephen King novella "The Colorado Kid," "Haven" will begin production in the spring in Canada.
Rose will play FBI agent Audrey Parker, who investigates a murder in the small town of Haven, Maine, and finds herself caught up in a web of supernatural activity among its citizens.
Rose has had several key recurring roles since appearing as Cass on "John From Cincinnati." She played Lena Branigan on "Brothers and Sisters," Trish Merrick on "Jericho" and Tracy Martin on "ER." She was also the lead in the USA pilot "Operating Instructions."
E1 Entertainment is producing "Haven," which is co-financed by Universal Netwowrks Intl. and is the first series to be produced for SyFy's international outlets (except in Scandinavia and, ironically, Canada). E1 is handling international distribution.
Scott Shepard ("The Dead Zone") is the series' showrunner, with Lloyd Segan, Shawn Piller and E1's John Morayniss and Noreen Halpern exec producing. Pilot scribes Sam Ernst and Jim Dunn also are exec producers.
>>> Variety
The 13x60' mystery drama, based on King's The Colorado Kid, is due to debut in the US on Syfy channel and on CanWest in Canada, while Universal Networks International has acquired global pay-TV rights beyond these territories, with the exception of Scandinavia.
LUNENBURG — The picturesque town of Lunenburg, N.S., is going to be the backdrop for a television series based on the work of horror-writer Stephen King.
Lunenburg will fill in for the fictitious Town of Haven, Maine where the inhabitants have no idea they are descendants of cursed ancestry.
Thirteen one-hour episodes are planned and the pilot for the series is pulling out all the stops for production in order to attract a large audience.
Filming will take place over three days beginning April 20.
The proposed cast includes Emily Rose, Lucas Bryant, Eric Balfour, Richard Donat and John Dunsworth.
Production has started with Lunenburg, Nova Scotia standing in for the fictitious Maine town of Haven, where Emily Rose ("Damages") plays an FBI agent solving the murder of a local ex-con.
The pilot's ensemble cast includes Lucas Bryant, Eric Balfour, Richard Donat and John Dunsworth.
The film crews have all but packed up and gone home.
But, for some their presence still lingers and it's left behind a sour taste.
Last week Lunenburg was home to three separate film productions, a movie, a miniseries and a theatrical-style trailer.
With them, however, came some restrictions on street use and invariably some inconveniences to local residents and merchants.
John