I hope you’re not getting tired of hearing about PadWorx Digital Media because — as I’ve been going on about for the past year — the move into digital and transmedia is only continuing to heat up and those screenwriters who neglect to pay attention to this space are going to be like the movie moguls of the 1920’s who thought talkies were a fad.
It’s not just because digital media represents a new avenue to peddle our wares (though it is and it does), it’s because understanding the interconnectivity between transmedia and what you’re writing RIGHT NOW is becoming an increasingly important component of every smart writer’s business plan.
Case in point: PadWorx has just announced that we’re working on the interactive, immersive book/app version of Quirk Publishing’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which is an important book for several reasons. Besides being the catalyst for a whole mess of ‘mash-up’ titles (Android Karenina, Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has been optioned by Lions Gate Films and is in pre-production. For the record, Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is currently being shot on location and produced by Fox. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and similar titles are big business and Hollywood is taking notice.
Of course, PadWorx is only involved with this title as a service provider. We didn’t inspire, create, or write the original Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Seth Grahame-Smith is the author), however we are putting our creative stamp on the underlying property in a very real way that people will see, pay attention to, and hopefully be impressed by.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies followed a traditional trajectory — from book to movie –however it’s now pushed to interactive book/app as well. If you’ve seen either Dracula: The Official Stoker Family Edition or A Christmas Carol for iPad, you know how cinematic these book/apps can be. As companies like PadWorx attract more attention they will have the impetus and credibility to create original titles that people will take seriously, not just perform service work on existing titles. The book to movie trajectory will inevitably broaden to include book/app to movie. This isn’t far-fetched; it wasn’t that long ago that plays became movies and not the other way around. All you need to do is check out the latest roster of shows on Broadway to witness how the paradigm has shifted. The potential for adapting a movie for Broadway is part of every reasonable filmco’s pre-purchase marketing meeting as is ‘transmedia,’ Hollywood’s buzzword of the year. If you are involved in the book/app space, you are involved in a growing industry that Hollywood is taking very seriously.
Bottom line…if you don’t already own an iPad get one and download some book/apps in order to understand how to apply your craft to this new breed of storytelling. If you don’t think that this convergence will reap benefits for those of you who fancy yourselves writers, then you haven’t been paying attention to the world these past 12 months.
— Jeffrey Alan Schechter
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