The one where I took a Saturday night boat ride to Wednesday Island
Regularly enough I am lucky enough to get along to movie preview screenings. Most of the time the screenings are pretty standard - you walk up, get your name checked off at the door and collect a free beer/Coke/bottle of water. Sometimes you’re lucky enough to get a choc top ice-cream. Often there’ll be a box of popcorn waiting for you on the chair.
As a critic, I appreciate the early access to a film. And it’s always pretty fun when there’s a big launch and you get to see what publicity teams can do to bring the experience of the movie to life a little bit.
Every so often, one of these launch events does something truly special that attendees will be discussing for years. One of these took place on Saturday night and it wasn’t for a movie - it was for Netflix’s hit TV show Wednesday.
Wednesday is Netflix’s all-time most-watched English language TV show with season one generating 252,100,000 views. In terms of global shows, it is right behind season one of Squid Game (which is at 265,200,000 views). So, Wednesday is a pretty big deal for Netflix.
To promote the second season of the show, Netflix has been rolling out its “Global Doom Tour” for the show with the stars and key creatives visiting countries including Romania, Italy, Poland, South Korea, and the UK. The final stop was in Sydney, Australia for an event billed as Wednesday Island.
Before we get much further, please keep in mind that I am impressed by almost nothing.
Wednesday Island was f***ing great.
Netflix took over Cockatoo Island - about a 20 minute boat ride from Sydney’s Darling Harbour. Staged on the island was a fan activation for what was around 2000 fans (I’m still awaiting an official number from Netflix, but that number feels about right).
From my write-up at Mediaweek:
The event was suitably spooky. As guests were dropped off by boat to Cockatoo Island, the sounds of howling dogs and other creepy noises filled the air. Visitors were met by various Burton-esque costumed figures as they were funnelled into a dark tunnel with the lights regularly sending guests into complete darkness. Once they emerged from the tunnel, one of the main event spaces was revealed – a red carpet space surrounded by lit torches and a large raven figure lit on fire.
It was spectacularly cool. Visitors were given an alcoholic blood bag drink and set off to wander around the event site while waiting for the celebrity guests to arrive. Inside a nearby building, visitors were treated to recreations of sets from the show, props, and general creepy displays.
You can find some of the official photos on the Mediaweek page. But, here’s my own gallery of snaps. And yeah, that’s Tim Burton giving me a big ol’ wave….
The scale of the event was just incredible. It culminated in a panel chat followed by a big concert with Peach PRC (I’m too old to know who she is).
But, if I can share two images with you that speak to what I liked about the event, it was this:
And this less-rambunctious shot that shows the depth of the space:
All of these people are just fans. It was a fan event. This wasn’t the usual crowd of influencers. And most of these people uploaded pictures to their various social platforms and had a great experience.
It was Netflix doing something for the audience and it was fully inclusive. It made for a special event and not just something on the social calendar for this week’s media events.
It was a great event with near-flawless* execution.
I’m a huge fan of activations that include the actual public. Netflix nailed this one and set a pretty high bar for anyone else to beat.
*The provided food was pretty tiny and it led a cranky me to a 10pm McDonald’s meal on the way home
Real fake TV (and movie) radio
I’ve long been obsessed with the divide between the real and fictional worlds created within the screen-based dreamscapes we watch on our screens. That might be a visit to locations used in the filming of shows/movies, or set or studio tours. But, I especially love taking media created for fake worlds and consuming it IRL.
For example, I love mixing That Thing You Do into almost every playlist as though The Wonders were a real band. Stillwater’s Fever Dog occasionally makes it in too. I also regularly pull down the memoir Sterling’s Gold from my shelf.
Which brings me to the discovery today of Jon Nelson’s edits of fictitious radio DJ’s from various movies and TV shows. You can now listen to full shows of theirs, inclusive of the music they played and their in-between track conversations with the audience. You can now listen to Chris in The Morning, Hard Harry, Adrian Cronauer, and several WKRP radio shifts as part of the Radio Retrofit project.
Fantastic work (even if there isn’t anything on site yet from North Norfolk Digital).
Listen now at Radio Retrofit.
News Desk
I made mention of this in the ABW TV guide on the weekend, but US Tubi now has the entire Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies library. There are 789 shorts in total now available, including shorts that are yet to be remastered (which means they were not available on HBO Max in years gone by).You can find details on it at The Verge.
In the past five years, King of The Hill has generated $100m in streaming revenue. Read: The Wrap
RIP Michael Sloan. The co-creator of The Equalizer was 78. Read: Variety
The Disney+ app on Apple’s Vision Pro now has an Alien: Earth Containment Room environment in which to watch your various Disney+ shows. Read: UploadVR
Filming seems to have been delayed on the Tomb Raider TV show from Phoebe Waller-Bridge that I am increasingly convinced will never happen. Read: Dark Horizons
That’s the newsletter for today.
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