SyFy and Universal "Imagine Greater," Form New Company

[Elizabeth Grunewald]

SyFy and Universal "Imagine Greater," Form New Company

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SyFy and Universal Pictures have teamed up for production and distribution of more films like Bats: Human Harvest and Mega Piranha.

According to Deadline, Universal Pictures and the science-fiction channel SyFy will soon announce a new joint venture. The two entities have joined forces to create SyFy Films, which will produce movies labeled as SyFy and distributed in theaters by Universal. The goal is for the new company to generate two films each year by 2012.

The official announcement will be made jointly by President of SyFy and Chiller Dave Howe, Executive Vice President of Original Programming Mark Stern, Universal Pictures Chairman Adam Fogelson, and Universal Co-Chair Donna Langley. Deadline quotes the official SyFy statement about the film company, in which Howe and Stern predict, "partnering our brand with the theatrical talent of Universal Pictures...will allow us to exploit our combined expertise and resources to create commercially successful quality films that have the potential to become great franchises for the whole company."

Universal's statement is a bit more pragmatic, as Fogelson and Langley anticipate, "joining together to find moderately budgeted projects that we can develop using their expertise and their brand is a great opportunity for both of our companies."

It looks like this project will finally be making science-fiction classics in the vein of Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud [http://www.syfy.com/movies/originals/index.php?pageid=132] available to a wider audience.

Source: Deadline [http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/universal-makes-genre-bid-with-syfy-films/#more-90892]

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[zHellas]

Hopefully they will be of higher quality...

I mean, seeing a serious and well-made verison of Mongolian Death Worms would be awesome.

 

[Tdc2182]

Oh garsh.

I was kinda hopin to see that SyFy was going out of business or something.

 

[TaboriHK]

I think, much like the drunken relative at the Christmas party, SyFy is massively overestimating how interested people are in seeing modern D-grade science fiction movies. I find the concept itself amusing, but I sat down to actually watch one of these once and not even alcohol made me enjoy it. It just completely annoyed me for some reason.

 

[Disaster Button]

I love that the announcer told us it was from Syfy, as if anybody seeing that would be under any doubt as to where it came from.

 

[Stryc9]

The only good thing I can say about this is at least it won't last long. They'll make two or three shitty movies no one will see and go out of business.

If Sci-Fi would take all the money they spend on making those horrible movies they play every weekend, and sometimes all week, and put that money into their original series the quality of their shows would go up and maybe they'd get more viewers.

 

[teh_Canape]

it's cool

as long as they don't fuck another franchise even further into the shit pit

Spoiler

I'm looking at you, Highlander: the Source

 

[thethingthatlurks]

Ah, does that mean they'll stop making shitty movies? Oh please, let it be so...

 

[scar_47]

man syfy really likes to hurt themselves don't they? Fisrt they kill of all of their decent original shows then they think that their made for tv movies are going to sell to a wider audience when the movies don't go over well with their own fanbase. I've watched a few of the movies just because they had an actor I liked and even then I could barely tolerate how horrible the movies were. I think this may finally end syfy's suffering.

 

[Lyndraco]

SyFy can tv shows alright, but I've never been impressed by their movies. I'm pretty sure no one is impressed by them. Why on earth would they want to keep making more?! This is only going to give them a worse reputation for making movies...

If Sci-Fi would take all the money they spend on making those horrible movies they play every weekend, and sometimes all week, and put that money into their original series the quality of their shows would go up and maybe they'd get more viewers.

I'll second that one whole heartedly.

 

[Amnestic]

Has anyone pointed out that "SyFy" (Sih-fee) sounds like a slang term for syphilis?

That's the first thing I thought of when I read the name change and I can't stop thinking ing now.

Ah, does that mean they'll stop making shitty movies? Oh please, let it be so...

*shakes magic 8-Ball*

"Outlook not so good".

 

[Baldr]

I like how SyFy puts original on everything including their new original series Being Human, which is a remake of a current BBC show that currently airs in the US on BBC-America.

 

[SamElliot'sMustache]

Only one good movie has ever gotten a U.S. release through the Sci-Fi channel, and that was Dog Soldiers, and that might as well have been an accident. Doubt we're going to see anything that good come from this deal.

But it'll be hilarious to see TV spots and theatrical trailers for something like Dinocroc. Maybe Roger Corman will produce a spiritual sequel to it called Octosaur...

 

[twistedmic]

I don't know if the Syfy theatrical movies will fail as quickly as others seem to think. After all, they'll only have to sell six or seven tickets (even at matinee-prices) per year to make back what they spent to produce the movies.

 

[Moosejaw]

Sci-Fi, whatever happened to you? That channel used to have awesome programming, reruns of great old shows and pretty good original programming. I remember when they picked up MST3K.

Used to watch it constantly, but then they started churning out these goddamned awful monster movies and now there's very very little to redeem the place. I didn't even bother keeping up with any of the Stargate spin-offs because I couldn't stand the channel.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I like how SyFy puts original on everything including their new original series Being Human, which is a remake of a current BBC show that currently airs in the US on BBC-America.

It's a remake? That's pathetic. I don't watch TV much at all anymore, but I remember my parents enjoying the series on BBC America. I was somewhat happy that SyFy was getting a decent series and bringing it to a wider audience. Remaking a show that's only a couple of years old and then claiming it as a SyFy Original is just low.

OT: What happened to the Sci Fi channel? It seems like one day they were showing stuff like Star Trek, Star Gate, Andromeda, and the occasional decent movie, and the next they were showing nothing but sequel series to Stargate, the crappy, overly melodramatic remake of Battlestar Galactica, Ghost Hunters, and dozens of D-grade movies that somehow manage to overshoot so bad it's good and hit so bad it's terrible almost every time. You know what used to fill the daily timeslot that those movies have now? Daily marathons of old shows like The Outer Limits, the original Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek TOS, The Twilight Zone, and whatever original series was either freshly on hiatus or about to come back from hiatus.

Is there a person on the planet who prefers the movies over the old shows? Because I know they still have the rights to at least a few of them, yet they keep making these crappy movies that, as far as I can tell, they only make because they're cheaper than making a decent original series or leasing something worthwhile from the BBC, which is sadly the last network in the English speaking world making decent science fiction.

I predict that this current venture will flop unless Universal is able to seriously up the quality of these films. Very few people are going to want to pay $10 or more to watch a movie that can be had in a DVD case with four other similar movies for $5. I'm not even making that figure up; that's the way these SyFy channel movies get sold on DVD, and the price usually ranges from $5 to $7.50.

 

[newwiseman]

I'll be happy if they just cast people based on acting talent, not "casting" talent in a closed room with a producer... Only thing that makes since for some of these cast decisions.

 

[Blind Sight]

Hopefully they will be of higher quality...

I mean, seeing a serious and well-made verison of Mongolian Death Worms would be awesome.

Even better: Mongolian Death Worms vs. Genghis Khan, I need to go phone SyFy right now...