Fighting the Summer Doldrums: What to Watch This Weekend

Late summer doldrums have finally hit the cineplex and none of this weekend's theatrical releases are doing much for me. So here's what I'm planning on checking out--Afterworld, an online animated series about a man who wakes up and finds that the world's population has disappeared (sounds very I Am Legend, if you ask me). From today's LA Times:

Debuting on MySpace today, "Afterworld" marks one of the most ambitious Internet shows to date, underscoring the evolution of online entertainment from amateur videos to more polished productions.

Created by Santa Monica-based Electric Farm Entertainment, "Afterworld" spans 130 episodes, each lasting two to three minutes. The show's roughly $3-million budget makes it the most expensive series of its kind to run on News Corp.'s social networking site, which draws more than 115 million active users worldwide each month.

"We're confident this is going to be an enormous success," said Jeff Berman, general manager for MySpace TV, which will release the first 10 episodes today. Starting Monday, new episodes will be released daily over the next several weeks.

As someone who covered digital entertainment during the first dot-com craze, it's great to see that web-based shows are finally starting to make a mark (I was actually quite impressed with what Sam Raimi has been doing on FEARnet). Even better, they're actually becoming financially viable. Afterworld is apparently already off to a good start. Early episodes have been a viral hit on Youtube and bud.tv and have reportedly drawn more than 1 million views. Electric Farm is also planning to "produce two other Web series, including one about Los Angeles zombies called Woke up Dead and The Gemini Division starring Rosario Dawson as New York cop investigating the bizarre murder of her husband. Both combine animation and live action." Here's episode one of Afterworld if you want to give it a test drive: