American Idol would premiere four months after Greenlight‘s first season ended and go on to birth actual pop stars and dominate television ratings for a decade. It returns to a reality TV landscape that’s far less hospitable to talent shows.ĭuring its first run, reality talent competitions were still a bit of a novelty and maintained a semblance of magical possibility. In the years before they were Batman and Bourne, the duo’s brand was that of the plucky underdog kids from Boston who “made good.” Project Greenlight - which snatched a filmmaker from obscurity via a contest, gave him or her the resources to make their film, and released the film in theaters under the devil’s bargain that they had to submit to their big break becoming a reality show -was something of an attempt to pay it forward. Case in point, this weekend’s relaunch of Project Greenlight - the indie film reality competition co-produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. It merely hibernates until weather conditions prove more hospitable to its environmental needs. In today’s ever-expanding content megaverse, intellectual property never really dies.
