U makes some online friends
Studio logs on for laffs
More Articles:
Most Viewed:
Oprah gets steamy with HBO(6370 views)Weitz digs 'Gardener'(3592 views)Brothers(3544 views)ABC adopts 'Find My Family' show(3173 views)Joshua Jackson's captain of 'UFO'(2561 views)'New Moon' shines at box office(2521 views) |
Studio and producers have made a rights deal to use the service as the centerpiece for a comedy that will follow relationships formed by fictitious users of the site.
Deal was made with Jonathan Abrams, CEO of Friendster, an advertising-supported site formed in 2003 that links millions of computer users on a daily basis.
Shamberg produced "The Big Chill," and he and Sher were producers on "Reality Bites" as well as the recently released "Garden State." He said each of those tapped into a specific demographic segment. He and Sher feel the Web site plugs them into a generation now accustomed to meeting and socializing by computer.
"Every 10 years of so, there is a great comedy to be done about the way people live, and Friendster fits perfectly into that setting," he said. "There's this electronic community where friends come together, people meet when they are not in the same physical space. The best way to do a relationship comedy accurately is to concentrate on what is going on now. There hasn't been one done like this."
Abrams said he'd been approached for film deals before, but liked the track record of the producers. The film will be helped, he said, by the fact Friendster users aren't anonymous strangers. They use their real names to connect with and make new acquaintances. They often wind up in physical proximity, which will be integral to the film.
"The idea was to merge off-line and online worlds, for people who have real relationships with each other," said Abrams, whose service is a privately held corporation headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and backed by Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark Capital, Battery Ventures and other individual investors.
The film will deal with a multitude of characters using the site in search of love and friendship. Some alliances work out well, some are disastrous.
Shamberg said he and Sher will secure a writer by early fall and U's Damien Saccani will steer the film.
