GENERAL KNOWLEDGE : IMPORTANT!!!!

I've been in touch with someone who knows a LOT about how studios like NBC Universal work, because the guy is a producer himself.

I'm going to explain some things to you. It's not that simple but I will try to tell you guys the basics... It was a revelation to me, and although I don't think it's gonna be an easy task (yup, things are going to be even more difficult!), I do believe we have the motivation enough to at least reach out and see what happens.

We will have to change our way of working a lot, and this is why :

When a studio is interested in doing a movie on a certain topic, the first thing they do, before they even think about a story, is investigating how much profits that movie could make.

How they do that depends on several subjects like :

1. What is the GLOBAL interest in such kind of movie?

• How well do Greek based movies do?

• How well do Greek based series do?

• Statistically, how should this evolve?

• How much time has elapsed since Xena ended?

• How well do those DVD sell globally?

1. The actors

• How popular (hot) is Lucy Lawless?

• How popular (hot) is Renee O'Connor?

These are a bit the basic questions told. If we should explain it in a little story :

NBC Universal is NOT interested in the Xena fans. Why? Because it's been 10 years since the show ended, so the Xena fans are the ones left! They know that the fans are there, but what about Xena GLOBALLY? Movies always target people between about 15-35, because those people go to the movies the most. So Xena fans, generally speaking, are not all teenagers.. Most of them were teenager when it aired...

They will NEVER make a movie for us fans That doesn't give them profits...

IF they make a movie, it has to appeal to young people..

The chances of getting a Xena blockbuster is really low to nothing..

A Direct-to-DVD is different. Why? It's low budget... But can a low budget movie make the kind of story the producers would like to do?? That's why Rob didn't accept the $50 million Universal offered a couple of years ago... They had to cut out the most of the story Katherine wrote...

So what can we do now???

I know the above explanation sounds hard.....

But there are some things we should accept and move on from there :

The advice I was given :

for NBC Universal, a reboot of Xena (for a blockbuster movie) is the only interesting possibility if they want to reach young audiences on a global scale.

A straight-to-DVD can be less subtle, but either way,

a reboot or not :

Xena, how you've known it as a series is DEAD. Forget that...
Xena should be darker. Dark movies are hot. Teenagers like that...

Xena should naturally be Xena as we know, but the whole story, movie, should be darker...

He adviced us to create a good TEASER. Make it dark.. Don't tell to much... Make us wanting more..

A good teaser trailer to rely on is :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB8XYZDu5zs&feature=related

As for the movie :

make some gossips, spread them out on IMDB, TMZ,PerezHilton... Talk about the teaser trailer.. Let people look at it... make a LOT of them look at it globally...

Spread out some gossips about rebooting Xena, or a darker Xena...

(there are enough talented screenwriters around, who can write a Xena reboot which CONTAINS Lucy and Renee and let it evolve to something that contains now hot actresses or actors...Looks count, and also, when it's not a reboot, who can set a dark tone for a Xena story)..

Basically :

We need to find someone talented who can create a DARK looking teaser trailer, with (very important) fitting music, out of existing Xena images.

We need to spread that around the internat globally. Let us NOT limit ourselves to Xena related boards, websites...

We must have other websites link to that teaser and talk gossip..

We need Xenites to help us, the fans are a base, because they have to start it.

And last but not least :

DVD sales are important, so selling the DVD's must stay a topic. But we must try to have people buying it for family, birthday gifts, whatever!

This is a big taks, but that's just the plain facts..

I really hope you weren't blow away by this, but this is how we should look at the concept..
In order to get Xena back, we must sacrifice our thoughts of wanting Xena back like she was in the series... She must stay Xena, but the story around it must be adapted!

Now I understand why Rob wanted to do a 300-like movie... We didn't understand that, but he understood : Xena must change...

Please post feedback, as this is really important news!

The good news is that Greek movies/shows are hot right now. With 300, Clash of the Titans, and Spartacus. Also with Lucy staring in Spartacus recently is also pretty big. This is also the year of the remakes.

I kinda figured that's the way a movie would go because with just going to the movies recently and everything... those are the kinda things you see in movies today. I kinda think of movies as a roller coaster and consider a tv show of those little trains you take to see the the amusement park. When you go to theaters you see lots of action/dark themes/sex with really basic story lines or left wondering what exactly was up with that random character/object that just popped in the screen for five seconds and left. Also tv shows have a lot of room for character development that movies don't really have time for. With a movie you have to keep someone entertained for about 1 1/2 hours. They normally don't know anything about the characters or story that it was made after.

From the responses from the topic you made in the main forum and XOC about a movie most fans would prefer it to stay as close to the original as possible. I personally wouldn't mind a darker Xena but would like the story to stay in place.

Maybe a new video contest is in order and to put this information up on the main site.

Xena must stay true to the person Xena, otherwise it wouldn't be Xena...
but the big difference is the adventure around it... We cannot see it like the series.

It could very well be a dark movie where we see them living some adventure which has nothing to do with the series...

As for the teaser trailer... I guess we should do another contest, but what about the previous entry? Should we give that person a "jumpstart"?

Yeah, Xena and Gabriele would have to have a completely different adventure than we are used to seeing but they still have to figure out a way to bring Xena back from the dead too lol.

We should announce the winner of the first contest and make that hall of fame section or something. So people will know that there is something that's worth it to participate in the contest. I'll contact the winner and get that information up. I'll also tell them about the new contest.

How should we describe the new contest to fit this theme? We kinda had a movie trailer contest already. Should we say we need a darker representation of a Xena movie, something you would see in today's theaters?

Wel, let's throw in some speculation amongst Xenites at first....

You could start by placing a simple message, like :

We know how Xena can be revived...we know what the studio would like to see...will the true Xenites unite and help this cause???

"Xena goes dark" ...read more next Monday and find out what you can do to help!!

Something mysterious....
Place it a couple of times...

Find people to translate it....

After a few days / a week, announce on facebook and the site, the new video contest.
Announce it like "Universal wants to see how popular Xena is on a global scale, so our next contest is : Create a Xena teaser trailer, not specifically announcing a Xena movie, or talking about "the Xena story" as we now it, but a compilation of Xena footage, that resembles todays trending : make it seem mysterious and dark, and choose the correct music that matches the dark tone....

The winner's video will be the one that we will launch as THE teaser trailer for our campaign, globally...

I don't know, perhaps I should buy an entrance ticket for some con or something Renee or Lucy will attend... If people can win, they'll do more effort... Maybe I'll buy 2 of them, place a donate button on the site, with the explanation of what you can win and what we'll do with that money (buying DVD's and send them to the troops)

Unfortunately I've realised we'll have to act a bit more heavier, and can't do that without spending some money... The only chance we have to take is that we will get profits out of all this, so I can recover something.. Nevertheless, I'll always provide you of all answers!

As an example of a good teaser trailer, give them the one I gave yesterday...


When the teaser is good, we'll put spread it out on pages like Spartacus, 300, Clash of the Titans, blabla... so we can hit a lot of views on youtube....

Basically I'm cool with any kind of XWP movie as long as the characters stay the same and are played by LL and ROC - sorry for my late reply, I had a couple of extremely busy days but I'm back now and ready to keep campaigning Will continue with my main task of adding friends on fb and myspace starting tonight, you guys let me know whenever something else I can do comes up...

I honestly hope we'll manage to get more people to participate in this contest comparing to the last one. I like the idea of leaving people wondering about "Xena goes dark" for a while, sounds like a clever marketing strategy to me. Maybe we should give ourselves a couple of days to plan the details, like make a list of websites and forums on which we'll be advertising the contest etc.