How many episodes are you anticipating Sanditon will be?
I’m not guaranteeing. I can say at least 12, but I would be surprised if it’s just 12. I would be genuinely surprised, for many reasons. And also, although that may seem like a small number considering how much time is between the first and second book, we do have a lot more interactive content designed this time.
“It’s designed to be different but similar than ‘Lizzie Bennet.'”
100% of the viewers watch Lizzie Bennet, but only say 50% or so dive into the interactive stuff. We’re experimenting with the interactive stuff. We don’t want to lose the super-fans, and I feel the super-fans do all the interactive stuff anyway, so that’s the kind of thing we’re going to play with. And then the new show launches in the later summer, we hopefully should be fine.
And it will be on the Pemberley Digital YouTube channel?
Sanditon will be on the Pemberley Digital YouTube channel, yes. I will also say that it may not be the only place where there’s video content.
You have said before that the interactive and transmedia elements are meant to be supplementary to the main story, but you don’t need them. Given that Sanditon is more immersive – will it become more critical that fans become involved with these elements, or will there just be more options if you choose to be?
I think it’s a little bit of both. Again, it’s not required. Let’s say, there’s one video and then there’s a bunch of transmedia content for days, hypothetically, and then there’s another video. Being required means that if you don’t watch any of the transmedia content, you’re completely lost in that second video. So that is definitely not what we are trying to do, because that’s just the way I want to world to be, and I’m pretty sure my teams agrees with me here.
But I do know that we want to try different things. There were a lot of things in Lizzie Bennet that we wanted to try but we just didn’t have the resources to do, or the time to do, and I’m really excited to see what they do this time as far as just enriching the world. I think that’s what the transmedia stuff did. The one great example in Lizzie Bennet, a recent one, was the San Francisco trip.
That was one we teased in multiple videos, and it was like, “We’re teasing, we’re teasing, we’re teasing and it doesn’t happen,” and you don’t see it on video but the event actually happens. So if you’re following on transmedia you get to see all of it, but you don’t necessarily need it. It was one of the coolest things I think we have done, and something I was really excited about.
So I’m guessing there’s stuff like that, but again I have not seen specific things, I just hear, “Oh we’re going to do this,” and I think “Oh wow.” And of course we now have two people who are part of the story, per the Kickstarter, and we have not contacted them yet. We are just waiting for the Kickstarter to end because they can always pull their pledges, but we’re really excited about that. When I asked and was like, “So the first one sold. Do we want to offer another one, will that make it harder for us?”
Because there’s a point where it’s diminishing, if we had five people we had to integrate – or five may not have been too much but ten definitely would be. One seemed pretty simple, and I thought two would be doable as well, and we were discussing it in the story meetings and they said “We could actually use another character” and I was like, “Oh okay great. Add one.” And sure enough the thing sells.
Do you have a set release date for Welcome to Sanditon yet?
No. We have an approximate but I don’t want to lock us into something, and then run into a problem and be delayed. It’s going to be either the first week of May or the second week of May. We are aiming for the first week of May. We have not decided actually what day of the week we are releasing. My feeling is it’s Monday, but it could change. Everything tells me Monday, but if transmedia is the crux of it all and there’s a lot of it, maybe you put it in the middle of the week. So that’s the only other version, but right now if I were to say what it was it would be Monday, but we have not locked that in.
Are you looking at only one episode a week then, or will you still be doing two?
We are exploring different accommodations.
Given there’s still a connection to Lizzie Bennet, is there a chance other characters will show up in it?
Yes, it’s not ruled out, it’s not guaranteed. I think you talked to Daniel a couple weeks ago?
Yeah, he said he would do it if he was asked.
Exactly. We have not had the discussions yet. Basically we are focused on world building right now, and story building, and making it about Sanditon and not about “Oh, here’s Darcy.” First thing’s first, we’ll get to the cameros later. But it does make a lot of sense that Darcy would call his sister, or Gigi would call her brother at some point, or her partner in crime Fitz.
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