The new streaming service Quibi is set to launch on April 6th, and among the shows that will be available to watch next month will be the thriller Survive, the Sam Raimi anthology series 50 States of Fright, and the HITCHER-esque The Stranger. One announced genre show that's not ready yet is the Steven Spielberg series Spielberg's After Dark – a show that can only be watched after nightfall in the time zone a subscriber is in.
Quibi is the brainchild of founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman, and it will be offering "quick bites" of entertainment. Episodes of their shows will be 10 minutes or less and they're meant to be watched on a smart phone.
Given that phones can track where it is at the moment — and keep tabs on when the sun rises and sets in its area — Katzenberg and Whitman challenged their engineers to come up with an idea for how to view the show when it’s spooky out. The result: A clock will appear on phones, ticking down until sun sets in wherever that user is, until it’s completely gone. Then the clock starts ticking again to when the sun comes back up — and the show will disappear until the next night.
When this project was first announced in June of last year, Katzenberg said,
Steven Spielberg came in, and said, ‘I have a super scary story I want to do.' He’s writing it himself. He hasn’t [written anything in a while] so getting him to write something is fantastic. [He has] written five or six episodes of a ten or twelve chapter story."
So Spielberg was halfway through writing the series nine months ago, and it sounds like he has been at a standstill since then. Speaking with Collider, Katzenberg provided a status update on After Dark:
I’m prodding (Spielberg) to get back to writing, because he wants to write that himself, and he’s written half of it. They came up with great technology for it and he’s very excited and we’re holding that just for him, that was his idea and I can’t wait for him to get a shot at it."
To be fair, Spielberg has been busy, as he went into production on his version of WEST SIDE STORY just one week after Katzenberg first spoke about Spielberg's After Dark. He has been pushing that film toward a December 2020 release, and hopefully he'll get back to writing his horror story when he's done with that. He recently decided not to direct the next INDIANA JONES film, handing the reins over to James Mangold, so that should help.
Spielberg has previously received story credits on THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS, THE GOONIES, and episodes of Amazing Stories. He earned screenplay writing credits on CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, POLTERGEIST, and A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
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