I was thrilled when Amazon picked up The Expanse and was shocked SyFy canned it. It is easily one of my favorites I never miss. In fact, I got into trouble with family when I committed heresy by...
I was thrilled when Amazon picked up The Expanse and was shocked SyFy canned it. It is easily one of my favorites I never miss. In fact, I got into trouble with family when I committed heresy by saying its the best science fiction TV serial ever, including (gasp) Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. So, I walked that back a tad so I don't get a bag of dirt for my birthday.
This following is why the move to Amazon is only going to make it better:
io9: Will working with Amazon give you more creative freedom, or at least release you from having to do things like bleep out swear words?
Shankar: Absolutely. None of those restrictions have to come into play, because those are all basic cable issues. What’s weird about it is that on Syfy all of that stuff was bleeped out, but if you happened to be watching it on Space in Canada, none of that’s bleeped out. It’s going to be, I think, terrific for the show, because we don’t have language restrictions, we don’t have nudity restrictions, we don’t have all of these things that conspire a lot of times to make, especially genre shows, not feel as adult as they should be. Not to feel real. In my mind, it sort of infantilizes genre [TV series] even more so. But that goes away on Amazon.
We also don’t have to jam the individual episodes into 43-minute chunks. There were a lot of times over the last few seasons that I’ve gotten a show through post, and it’s been like, “Man, it would much better if I could just open this thing up by two minutes.” But you can’t. That isn’t a problem on Amazon either. So I think there’s huge creative advantages. And honestly, this show was made for streaming. It was made for bingeing. That’s just what it is. And everybody [who works on The Expanse], I think to a person, would say the same thing.
People cite cost, advertisements, and lack of quality content as reasons people are cord-cutting by the droves. It is true, we've been cord-cutters for about 6 years now and will never go back. But the statements above are what is killing cable and network television too. Producers, writers, actors have a whole lot more freedom to create unique and fully fleshed out content rather than appease executives who think they know what we want and advertisers who are skittish about anything that might even be remotely avant-garde, complex or controversial. In addition, time constraints due to advertising compounds all of these problems. The other part of this equation is new talent now have venues that weren't available to them before leading to a renaissance that is a big win for viewers.
One more factor that has been just fantastic is the availability of foreign content that cable/satellite never offered unless you paid out the nose for an exclusive one-language channel. I enjoy documentaries that I never would have seen on cable/satellite. There is more quality content available now than we have time to watch and in genres that often would be shy or in a full on drought for years.
I started reading the books recently after it got picked up by Amazon. It's weird reading books of a TV or film adaptation you've already seen and loved. Usually it's the other way round and...
It's weird reading books of a TV or film adaptation you've already seen and loved. Usually it's the other way round and there's always just oceans of disappointment, but this is like taking a sketch and adding photo realistic shading to it.
I was thrilled when Amazon picked up The Expanse and was shocked SyFy canned it. It is easily one of my favorites I never miss. In fact, I got into trouble with family when I committed heresy by saying its the best science fiction TV serial ever, including (gasp) Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. So, I walked that back a tad so I don't get a bag of dirt for my birthday.
This following is why the move to Amazon is only going to make it better:
People cite cost, advertisements, and lack of quality content as reasons people are cord-cutting by the droves. It is true, we've been cord-cutters for about 6 years now and will never go back. But the statements above are what is killing cable and network television too. Producers, writers, actors have a whole lot more freedom to create unique and fully fleshed out content rather than appease executives who think they know what we want and advertisers who are skittish about anything that might even be remotely avant-garde, complex or controversial. In addition, time constraints due to advertising compounds all of these problems. The other part of this equation is new talent now have venues that weren't available to them before leading to a renaissance that is a big win for viewers.
One more factor that has been just fantastic is the availability of foreign content that cable/satellite never offered unless you paid out the nose for an exclusive one-language channel. I enjoy documentaries that I never would have seen on cable/satellite. There is more quality content available now than we have time to watch and in genres that often would be shy or in a full on drought for years.
Apologies, I've gone off topic a bit here.
I started reading the books recently after it got picked up by Amazon.
It's weird reading books of a TV or film adaptation you've already seen and loved. Usually it's the other way round and there's always just oceans of disappointment, but this is like taking a sketch and adding photo realistic shading to it.
I really cannot wait to see what it holds..