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Steven Soderbergh confirms mysterious "Mosaic" project with HBO

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G

gutshot

Member
Dan said:
Umm, update, per Soderbergh himself: "To be clear: MOSAIC is not choose-your-own-adventure and there are no alternate endings."
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From Entertainment Weekly:

Steven Soderbergh is working on an ultra-mysterious HBO movie that may let viewers use an app to determine the course of the film’s story line.

For weeks we’ve been pestering HBO to confirm what we’ve been hearing about a hush-hush project called Mosaic.

We know for fact the film is from Soderbergh, the Oceans 11 filmmaker and producer of Cinemax’s The Knick. We’ve heard Sharon Stone will star. Most intriguingly, we’ve heard that the film will have multiple endings — with the viewer determining which outcome will be shown via an app.

Those latter two elements have not been confirmed or denied. But HBO broke its silence to EW on the project Thursday with a rather intriguing statement from Soderbergh: “I believe the good people at HBO are genuinely enthusiastic about Mosaic for two reasons: first, it represents a fresh way of experiencing a story and sharing that experience with others; second, it will require a new Emmy category, and we will be the only eligible nominee.”

Presumably the new Emmy category Soderbergh references would be for the “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style interactive component of the film, though whether the TV Academy agrees they need to create a new category (one in which only Mosaic could win, no less) remains to be seen.

Soderbergh has long been a fan of experimental storytelling, from his 1995 non-linear comedy Schizopolis, to his 2009 faux documentary The Girlfriend Experience starring porn star Sasha Grey.
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J

JDSN

Banned
Im not really a big fan of experimental Sodernbergh but he is running the best directed show of last year so im in.
 
J

JBourne

maybe tomorrow it rains
That sounds like a lot of fun. I'd love to watch it with friends and decide how it plays out.
 
M

Mushroomer25

Member
I've been wondering when one of the major players would start playing with a concept like this. In many ways, it's the flip-side of the Telltale formula. Rather than using film-like concepts to make a more cinematic videogame, it's using game-like concepts to make an interactive film.

I wonder if it will be aired live (relying on a public vote), or purely an HBO Go product.


If this takes off, I want somebody to adapt the Zero Escape series into a similar experience.
 
A

aku:jiki

Member
How exactly do you pick an ending without spoiling it first? Even if it's kept vague, you'll probably still figure it out from the options since they need to be descriptive enough to be more of a choice than "ending 1" and "ending 2". This sounds kinda pointless.
 
I

Imbarkus

As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
I would watch a movie adaptation of this:

CLVRaKhUYAARAqj.jpg
 
G

gutshot

Member
aku:jiki said:
How exactly do you pick an ending without spoiling it first? Even if it's kept vague, you'll probably still figure it out from the options since they need to be descriptive enough to be more of a choice than "ending 1" and "ending 2". This sounds kinda pointless.
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Have you ever read a Choose Your Own Adventure book? It's not like you pick at the start what kind of ending you want. At certain points in the story, the protagonist is given a choice, say, do I run from the bad guy or try to fight him? You then choose one of those and the story splits based on your choice. Usually there are about 3-5 different moments where the story can split before it finally ends with one of multiple different endings. It sounds like this would be a lot like that.
 
R

RedToad64

Member
Soderbergh: “I believe the good people at HBO are genuinely enthusiastic about Mosaic for two reasons: first, it represents a fresh way of experiencing a story and sharing that experience with others; second, it will require a new Emmy category, and we will be the only eligible nominee.”
Click to expand...
So they just really want an Emmy.
 
J

jelly

Member
Like the Tell Tale games I suppose.

Not a great fan because they generally lead down the same path in the end but you sort of mix things up along the way but with little meaning to the ending.
 
D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
Not sure about this as something worth pursuing in an otherwise non-interactive medium, but Soderbergh is always at least intriguing.
 
G

gdt

Member
Soder is in a really great place right now. Excited to see this....whatever it is. HBO has been trying to rope him in the club since Knick...which is an HBO show in a way.
 
D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
If there's even any truth to the notion that it might be formally experimental, where the viewer can perhaps select their focus, maybe it's something along the lines of Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls.

Who knows. I'm sure the press will bug him about it over the next couple weeks during publicity for The Knick.
 
D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
Mega bump.

Here's a clearer picture of what Mosaic is from an interview Soderbergh did in February:
What else do you have on the table?

There’s this experimental narrative piece that I’m really excited about. HBO wants to put another show like it into production. It’ll be on their streaming platform, and you’ll be able to, at certain design points, follow whatever character you want to follow. There’s a story map, and when you get to the end, you can go back and look at all the stuff you missed. We’ve been working on it a long time. The editorial process has been really tricky, and I think we finally found the structure that works. So this summer they’ll do all the tech testing to make sure that if a million people log in, it doesn’t crash. It’s called “Mosaic”.

I have other stuff that I have set up that I’m hoping to do that are in that 6-to-10-hour range.
Click to expand...
So, it's not choose-your-own-adventure, but you can choose which character paths to follow as the story unfolds.

Sounds like HBO will be doing a stress test this summer on the technical elements, so maybe a fall debut?
 
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