One of the most talked about shows right now is House of Cards, which is a Netflix original (well, actually we stole it from England like most of our other good shows) and to finally have a show that’s premium channel (HBO, Starz) quality but at the flat rate of your Netflix subscription is rewarding.

Let’s face it. We’ve been moving away from Televisions as our only source of watching our shows. Rushing home to watch a show or planning your week around them are a thing of the past with dvr and other popular recording systems like TiVo. The websites of all the major cable channels offer the ability to stream clips and in some cases, full shows.

We’ve really convinced ourselves that we’re so busy that we wait so long after shows have premiered to watch them? Yes. Well, sometimes we’re busy. Most of the issue is losing track of when shows air and when you’ve missed a few episodes you throw in the towel for the season. Then you’ll tell yourself that you’ll catch up right before the next season airs. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. It’s tedious but I love it. Binge watching House of Cards is oddly rewarding.

The rise of internet media houses allows us even more freedom. Yes, some of them stick to conventional airing format e.g. YouTube Shows or put up entire seasons e.g. Netflix. Amazon is starting to weigh in on the movie / show making game and recently invested in creating a partially crowd source space for movie makers, show makers and comedians and other performers.

Scripts for television and film are submitted through the web. They are reviewed and rated by other readers in a crowd-source fashion, and/or by Amazon staff. Scripts may be submitted with the option to allow other people to modify them. In addition there is a separate submission method for professional writers (Writers Guild of America members) with separate rules.

Amazon has 45 days to choose a submitted script. If a project is chosen for development the writer receives $10,000. If a developed script is selected for distribution as a full-budget series, the creator gets $55,000 as well as “up to 5 percent of Amazon’s net receipts from toy and t-shirt licensing, and other royalties and bonuses.” 

It’s an amazing development and that it’s allowing thousands of people to at least take a shot of their dream. A shot they may not have obtained through petitioning popular movie houses/production companies.

I’m looking forward to the display of talent and range this will unearth more than anything but unfortunately for us, it looks like there isn’t anything in production but they have 2,700  pilots have been developing. That’s a lot of new shows, even if they develop 1/10 of that number.

It’s almost making me feel like 2015 isn’t that far away. 🙂

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Studios

Check out their official site: http://studios.amazon.com/