TorrentFreak

• Ernesto
• April 8, 2010
• 61
• Pioneer One,
  vodo
• Print

BitTorrent has already revolutionized the TV-viewing experience for millions of people and it will soon welcome its first exclusive release. ‘Pioneer One’ is an upcoming sci-fi series that will premiere on BitTorrent where it will instantly have a massive audience.

“In contemporary North America, an object returns to Earth. A government agency recovers what appears to be a lost Soviet-era space capsule that disappeared decades ago. Inside they find the impossible — something that will have ramifications for the whole world.”

The paragraph above sets the stage for a brand new sci-fi series that will debut not on TV, but on BitTorrent. Titled Pioneer One, the series is a project from Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith who have collaborated before on ‘The Lionshare’, a BitTorrent-exclusive film which was released on VODO earlier this year.

Rather than the traditional path taken by most TV-makers, they do not plan to pitch a pilot to the studios. Instead, they are making the series on their own backed by donations from the public. The result will premiere exclusively on BitTorrent where it will instantly have an audience of hundreds of thousands of viewers.

The previous releases on VODO, a novel BitTorrent-powered distribution platform for indie filmmakers, have been a massive success as they were downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people. VODO is fully supported by The Pirate Bay, EZTV and many other well known file-sharing partners that help to promote the releases.

Josh Bernhard, who wrote the script for the upcoming TV-series, sees VODO as the ideal distribution channel for ‘Pioneer One’ and hopes that it will equal or exceed the success of the film they released late last year.

“Because of our success with The Lionshare, we think we have a novel incentive to give potential sponsors,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak. “With the number of people who downloaded Lionshare, and the demographic they come from, we think that forward-thinking companies would see the opportunity in associating their brand with a unique show like this.”

The series, described by its makers as a “political drama, part procedural drama, with a tinge of sci-fi”, has the potential to revolutionize the TV-business. By taking the show directly to the Internet where it will build an online fanbase, it goes directly against traditional TV-making procedures.

The production of ‘Pioneer One’ is already well underway. The casting for the pilot has been completed and the crew will start shooting in 4 days. In order to produce a high quality pilot the makers are running a Kickstarter pledge drive through which they hope to get at least $6000 in funding from contributers who support the project.

If you want to be part of TV-history, we recommend that you send a few bucks over. At TorrentFreak we will definitely keep you updated on the project’s progress.

“In contemporary North America, an object returns to Earth. A government agency recovers what appears to be a lost Soviet-era space capsule that disappeared decades ago. Inside they find the...