New Jane Austen Web Series Lets Viewers Crowd Source Ending (Exclusive)

A new show from the team that reinvented "Pride and Prejudice" to much acclaim will crowd source the characters 

Viewers of “Welcome to Sanditon,” an upcoming web series based on an unfinished Jane Austen manuscript, will be able to create their own characters and finish the work of the famed British writer, the producers told TheWrap on Monday.

The show, which premiered on Monday, is a sequel to the award-winning web series, “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.” That series, which reimagined Austen’s most famous novel in video blogs, won several awards and netted almost 40 million views over the past year.

Producers will use Theatrics.com to enable viewers to create characters and interact with the story.

“Using ‘Sanditon’-where literally no one knows what Austen's ending was going to be-as the basis for our next project seemed like the perfect way both for us to do something new, and to be able to invite the fans to help create the town alongside us," said Margaret Dunlap, an executive producer on the project in a statement to TheWrap.

That's only one of the new media twists with this project.

Pemberley Digital, which started as a fictional company in the show and is now a real company, has launched one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns for a video project to manufacture a DVD of "Bennet," a book and for new shows. It raised $462,405.

Having crowd-funded financing, Pemberly will now crowd source the conclusion of “Sandito."

The show takes place in Sanditon, California, a beach town aiming to reinvent itself as a desired resort destination. Fans will witness the story through the videos of Georgiana “Gigi” Darcy (Allison Paige).

"People are constantly asking us about ‘The Lizzie Bennet Diaries’: ‘How did interaction with fans affect the story?’ And the truth is that when you're working from an amazing and well-loved story like ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ there's only so far you can stray from the original before you aren't telling a version of Austen's novel anymore,”

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