This is bonkers. Amazon is crowdsourcing new movies in an effort that seems to go beyond simple PR promotions. More like Wikipedia meets Mechanical Turk meets film school.
Amazon Studios is
a new website that lets users upload scripts and sample movies and then use community tools to evaluate and edit each others’ work. Work judged the best by a panel of experts and company executives will be brought to Warner Bros, where Amazon has signed a first-look deal, in hopes of ultimately producing feature films under the Amazon Studios production label.
Users can post scripts or storyboards and other users can rate, comment, or even revise without the original poster’s permission. The highest rated users are eligible for monthly or yearly prizes totaling $2.1 million through the end of 2011. Warner Bros is not committing to anything other than looking at the projects. Amazon will pay $200,000 for anyone whose work gets turned into a feature film.
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