Wednesday, November 07, 2007

RDM at the Picket Line


IGN spoke to Ron Moore at the WGA picket line today about the issues at hand, and how this is affecting BSG's final season:

As for how Battlestar Galactica is being affected, Moore said "We have an episode [filming] on the stage right now that will be the last episode. We don't have a script beyond that, so this will be it." There had been varying talk about just how many episodes Battlestar had completed of its 20 episode final season, but Moore told me the episode filming now "happens to be our mid-season cliffhanger, so it's just one of the quirks of the schedule that boom, we will finish our first ten and the network had planned to show just the first ten anyway. The airdate for the back ten was up in the air. Now it's even more up in the air."

In the event of a prolonged strike, I asked Moore how difficult it might be to reassemble the cast and crew, who had thought they would be finishing work on the series forever this spring. "We can certainly do it," Moore said, in regards to getting everyone back. "I know that the entire cast and crew and writing staff are eager to finish and it's very, very important to us to finish, so whenever it's resolved, we'll all be ready to go back in and finish the show. We know what the stories are. We haven't written the scripts, but we know what the stories are, leading up to the finale. "
It had recently been announced that Moore would be making his directorial debut on a Battlestar episode, and he laughed, revealing that was going to be the next episode shot. "It was an interesting week last week, because the very next one was going to be the one I was going to write and direct, and that's the one that we're not gonna do."

(Btw Ron, yes your stuff is on Hulu.)



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2 comments:

Logan Gawain said...

What Ron relates in that story about Universal's behavior regarding the Resistance webisodes last year is pretty shocking.

To see that corporate greed has gotten so out of control that they basically think writers, actors, and crew should all be their serfs is pretty fraked up.

Though I'm starting to think the Corporate overlords are out matched in this fight. I think it was Gore Vidal who said, "Never get in an argument with writers. They always get the last word."

Or something like that.

ProgGrrl said...

Well...sorry Logan, I can't quite agree with you there.

It"s not too surprising me to hear that a TV net assumed that webisode production in the midst of producing a season of a show, would be free of extra cost.

Film/TV cast and crew do a lot of things for free as part of their deals - promotional photo/film shoots for ad/trailers, press junkets, interviews, festival appearances, extras for the DVD. I have a sense that at that time, when only BSG and 24 and a small handful of shows were doing mobile/internet-only work, that the TV nets really did still see it as "promotional."

Even to me (and I'M FOR THE STRIKE), I can see the other side on the webisode thing.

But showing entire films and TV episodes online for free? That is another animal.