If you’ve been following Geekscape on Twitter and Facebook (and now on Youtube with GeekscapeTV!), then you’ve no doubt watched the sizzle reel for our Geekscape original series ‘Paul London: Hero of the Prophecy’. The idea came from my brother Paul, who thought it would be fun to do something Buck Rogers-ish for one of his wrestling photo shoots. He, Graham Douglas and his former tag partner Brian Kendrick went up to Griffith Park one day and shot some ridiculous promotional photos. When I saw them I thought he had lost his mind. Wrestling fans would never go for this… but geeks just might (I’m pretty sure I was wrong about the wrestling fans, who so far love it, but was right about the geeks!).
That’s Graham on the left… as ‘Finnegan’ for the first time!
I suggested to Paul that he get together with William Bibbiani and write up an idea for a webisode script. What William wrote is still one of the favorite things I’ve ever read… but it was too expensive. There was no way we could shoot it. Part of that was my fault. I told them to just go nuts, but as my producing partner Georg Kallert and I started to meet with people about what was now called ‘Paul London: Hero of the Prophecy’ it became clear that to make this series properly, with great wrestling and semi-passable 80s effects, it was going to take some money. Several doors were closed in our faces. It was a depressing time.
Ultimately, we decided to shoot the sizzle that you now see below on GeekscapeTV. Georg, William, Paul and I wrote something that we could afford from scratch, something that we could present to TV Networks and show them in a modest way what the show could be, especially the 80s nostalgic tone (and of course… the wrestling!). It wasn’t easy, as William had some hilarious ideas and I had trouble figuring out what we could afford to shoot in 3 days. Finally Paul, Georg, Graham, William and some of our friends (Brian Gilmore, Marisha Ray, Yuri Lowenthal, Nick Gregorio, Jason Trost, Kari Lane and Mr. Doug Jones) spent a few days shooting it after the dungeon/castle set was built and we had found a place in sunny Simi Valley that would work for the exteriors. We had to delay one day from the shoot for a few months due to Doug’s Falling Skies schedule but Doug is literally the sweetest man I’ve ever met in Hollywood (and one of the most talented) so it was definitely worth the wait! And of course, seeing him vaporize Gilmore wasn’t something I was going to compromise! I’d been waiting to see Gilmore killed on screen for years!
Mr. Doug Jones… the sweetest man in Hollywood!
The days were fun and our love for 80s sci fi and fantasy films helped power us through the long hours (and the summer heat). Finally, after a few months of off and on editing, we arrived at the sizzle trailer that you see below. It’s a pitch piece that we can show people in order to tell them what ‘Paul London: Hero of the Prophecy’ could be, a celebration of nostalgia, wrestling and sword & sorcery (which is more popular today with Game of the Thrones and Lord of the Rings as it’s ever been) rolled up into a love letter to my brother Paul, a boy who grew up loving wrestling and achieved his dream of wrestling in the WWE at the age of 22. Now that those years are behind him and he’s off on life’s next adventure, I thought it would be a fun and sincere basis for a big, hilarious space and fantasy opera.
Please, if you enjoyed what you saw here, share ‘Paul London: Hero of the Prophecy’ with your friends, family… and even enemies! We want everyone to see what we’ve created in the hopes of keeping all of our childhood dreams and loves alive. That is why it’s so important to us here at Geekscape! And maybe, just maybe, with enough fan support or if it lands on the right set of eyes, the adventure will continue some more!