Coming Attractions 2.0!

• email this story
• read comments (16)
• post a comment
• 
  
  

Coming Attractions founder Patrick Sauriol read this morning's piece about the general popularity, essentialness and vitality of the old CA site, and has written to announce Coming Attractions 2.0 will be up and running less than 30 days from now. Excellent. The old CA '90s current lives again! And more ad dollar competition to boot!

"I just read your piece on the site today," Sauriol began. "Thanks for the love. I can also give you some good news that you can break on your site if you want: Coming Attractions is coming back next month.

"In 2006 I decided that I wanted to relaunch Coming Attractions. It's been a nightmare trying to find the right development team that can execute what I want with CA 2.0, taking the better part of two years to get to where I'm at: less than 30 days away from launching the new Coming Attractions, so your article asking about whatever happened to CA comes at almost the right time.

"I'm purposely downplayed the noise and tried to keep it low that CA 2.0 is in development, mainly because it's been hell trying to get it built but also I'm a strong believer in 'show, don't tell.' I've tried to keep in mind all the cool things about CA 1.0 that people tell me they liked and make sure that it remains in CA 2.0. That said, there is going to be a ton of things that the new CA will bring.

"Rest assured that there will still be movie database pages but now there will also be picture galleries, budget and box-office info, the ability to leave comments and two absolutely amazing apps that I am really excited about that will be able to tell the reader how hot or cold the hype for a movie is throughout the film's entire production history. For example, you can see the ups and downs of the production cycle of James Cameron's Avatar in a single image that can also be manipulated by the user. You can see how casting news, the release of a trailer or any other buzzworthy event impacts the film's hype throughout any stage of the movie.

"The way that I explained this to the development team is this: suppose CA 1.0 was the old Battlestar Galactica and CA 2.0 will be the new Galactica -- take the cool ideas that worked for the old series and then use them to make an even better version of the original idea. That's what I'm hoping readers will see in CA 2.0.

"To answer your other questions...

"Back in 2003 Cinescape offered me the chance to report movie news through their site (and at the time their magazine). Part of the deal was that I would be exclusive with them for the duration of my contract (2 years) but that CA would redirect to their site.

"Financially speaking it was a better deal for me because my overhead was still way too high (internet costs had just started to roll back due to the fallout from the dot-bomb days of '00). Instead of having to use 2/3rds of the revenue made from advertising on CA to cover bills I could actually pay myself and make a living as a writer. With a baby on the way I took the job offer. The Cinescape contract was written so that all the content I produced, I still owned. I never sold any part of Coming Attractions. I still own all of the thousands of pages, which is important for what I'll be doing this year.

"FYI, I never got a big selling out check. Cinescape paid me a decent monthly amount so I could write online full time but it was never a buy out situation.

"In late 2005 Cinescape started to go under. Just before the company dissolved UGO.com approached me about coming to work for them full time. I started in the fall of 2005 with UGO. One of the things that I did there was create their movies blog which broke a number of world exclusives including the review of the Justice League movie script and spoilers about the new STAR TREK movie.

"In spring 2008 UGO decided not to renew my contract and I was let go. At around the same time a local Vancouver internet start-up called MovieSet.com approached me about blogging for their site. Eventually they asked me to come onboard full time when their funding came through. That's my 9-to-5 job right now. I took the job because I liked the vision for the company (they want to deliver an authentic movie experience for fans and also offer a complete online solution for movie crews to help with their production and they like my writing, so how could I say no?). There's a lot more I can tell you about MovieSet. It's got a helluva ambitious idea behind it (think IMDb meets Facebook), but I can always get into that at a later time if you want to know more.

"In-between all of this work stuff there was also a lot of personal heartache and it impacted my creative side. In the space of three years I lost both of my parents to illness and my wife and I also suffered through the loss of a baby. I'm close to family so each of these events hit me like nuclear bombs -- events like these put into perspective writing about the latest cool movie trailer or so-and-so being cast in X-Men 4. 2008 has been a lot better for me, both in speaking of my career and personal life.

"Anyway, I hope that gives you a better idea of where I am and what's going on. If you want to follow up on any of these things ask away, and feel free to publish what I've said on your site. And when I launch CA 2.0 I planned on dropping you an email anyway, to ask that you change the link you've got on your site.

"Thanks again for saying the nice stuff about CA and me."