Ragesh Dipu
Steven Spielberg is writing a horror series for the short video platform Quibi. Titled as ‘Spielberg’s After Dark,’ the series will have between 10 and 12 chapters, revealed Quibi co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg on Sunday, reports Variety. Katzenberg, while answering reporters’ questions at the Banff World Media Festival in Canada, also revealed the upcoming programming plans of the pioneering short-form video platform Quibi.
“Steven Spielberg came in, and said, ‘I have a super scary story I want to do,” Katzenberg is quoted as saying by Variety. “He’s writing it himself. He hasn’t [written anything in a while] so getting him to write something is fantastic.” Katzenberg said Spielberg has already “written five or six episodes (which Quibi calls “chapters,” like a novel) of a 10- or 12-chapter story.”
The intriguing part of the story is an unusual demand from Spielberg. According to Katzenberg, the maverick director wanted viewers to only be able to watch the horror series after midnight! In other words, the users’ mobile phones will track their location and time at the time of streaming the series to make sure it is after midnight, quite a scary thing indeed! Katzenberg and Whitman had reportedly given it as a challenge for Quibi tech-wizards to come up with a path-breaking feature.
And the result is the amazing feature of a ticking click on users’ mobile phones. It will count down until the sun is completely gone in the users’ area and start again when the sun comes back, switching off the streaming of the show until the next night.
Quibi, which Katzenberg co-founded with former HP CEO Meg Whitman, will also introduce a number of “originals” from prominent Hollywood creators, studios and stars. According to reports, each show will likely be divided into capsules of seven to 10 minutes each for streaming. “What Quibi is doing, it’s not really short form,” Katzenberg said. “We’re putting those sciences together. Chapters or act breaks that are 7 to 10 minutes long. They are specifically shot to be watched on the go. If you’re 25-35 years old, you get up and you’re on [a smartphone] for over five hours.”
The short digital video platform has already unveiled originals like ‘#Freerayshawn‘ starring Stephen James and Laurence Fishburne from Sony Pictures Television, an untitled Steven Soderbergh project, a non-scripted series from James Corden and Israeli mentalist Lior Suchard, reboots of the MTV series ‘Punk’d’ and ‘Singled Out,’ and the comedy ‘Dummy’ starring Anna Kendrick.
Elsewhere, Spielberg is also working on a reboot of his 1985 horror anthology series ‘Amazing Stories‘ for Apple TV Plus.
Cover Image Courtesy: Variety.
