A new sci-fi series from Marco Weber (“Igby Goes Down”) and Jeff Stockwell (“Bridge to Terrabithia”) aims to marry the innovations of crowdfunding and streaming television using BitTorrent’s Bundle platform, the writers announced on Monday.
Produced by Rapid Eye Studios, “Children of the Machine” will premiere a pilot on BitTorrent, and then offer fans the opportunity to pre-order an entire first season for $9.95 via the Bundle platform. Once Rapid Eye receives 250,000 orders, it will go into production on the entire season, which will feature eight more episodes.
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In this way, the series will be crowd-funding — a la Kickstarter — and be available only online, like Netflix.
Perhaps best known for its prominent role in the battle Hollywood is waging on piracy, file-sharing service BitTorrent has worked to prove its legitimacy to the industry in recent years. The Bundle, launched in 2013 was designed to allow artists to make work available to fans with fewer gatekeeping restrictions; by June, it had amassed over 100 million downloads and streams, the company said. BitTorrent has over 170 million users.
Also read: BitTorrent’s Experiment With Artist Bundles Hits 100 Million Downloads
Some of the higher-profile artists to work with BitTorrent include legendary rap group De La Soul, which put its back catalog on the service, as well as Madonna, who worked with Vice on a free 17-minute documentary about free speech.
“Children of the Machine” will also run on Cinedigm’s new Comic-Con programming network. Cinedigm has also worked with BitTorrent in the past, making for a comfortable partnership.