Paul Verhoeven Is Crowd-Sourcing For Talent.

Forget all the previous titles-in-development you've heard the name of Paul Verhoeven being attached to: the venerable Dutch director told on national television that even for him, more than 90 % of all projects end before filming starts because getting the financing together is just too damn difficult in the current climate.

However, he did just start work on a movie. Two movies in fact, and the setup is pretty unique. There is no script yet. Nor a commercial title. Neither are there actors. Or, to be closer to the truth, there are a LOT of them.

Paul Verhoeven's new project is called "Entertainment Experience" and is fully crowd-sourced except for financing, which has been secured. Paul Verhoeven is not sourcing for money, he is sourcing for talent. Any talent. Famous Dutch actress Kim van Kooten has written the first few minutes of the script, and everyone who wants to film them is free to do so. Anyone can try his hand at acting, cinematography, scoring, whatever. The results will be published on the website, and the audience will choose which part is the one to go with.

At the same time, everyone is also invited to write the script for the NEXT few minutes, and these will also be chosen through democracy. Paul has let slip that he will be allowed to "steer" the audience a bit in their choice and a panel of professionals is on hand to provide advice throughout the production.

The above procedure will result in a rather fragmented film, to be commercially released next year. At the same time Paul will be filming each segment on his own, with his own fixed crew and fixed cast, and that film will ALSO be released commercially next year.
Note that Paul will not allow himself the luxury of (much) hindsight in this, as he will start filming each segment from the moment the script for that segment is locked. He is now actually filming his own version of segment one but will not tell who his cast and crew are, so as not to influence the crowdsourced version too much yet.

There are also additional challenges being crowdsourced as part of this project, including the creation of the teasers and trailers, and the design of a videogame based on the movie.
An interesting project to say the least! Anyone interested can participate, alas the language is Dutch.

More information can be found on the website of Entertainment Experience.