Hollywood Wants to Turn a Single Quora Q+A Thread Into a TV Show
Quora, a question-and-answer startup that's basically Yahoo Answers with crumbs of intelligence sprinkled on top, may not live to see forever, but it could make it to Hollywood. According to Variety, a response posted to the site is now being optioned as a television series.
The proposed show came from the thread "If every state of the USA declared war against each other, which would win?" The top answer apparently caught the eye of Josh C. Kline, head of media and entertainment at the cloud storage startup Box, who apparently dabbles in TV on the side. Now the Emmy-winning producer wants to turn the Quora answer into a TV series "in the vein of 'Fargo.'"
The most popular response, a dystopian account of a second Civil War in the U.S. with shades of "World War Z" penned by retired U.S. Marine Sergeant Jon Davis, so entranced Kline, he optioned the idea—"it wasn't free but it wasn't much," notes Kline of the deal— and attached himself as producer.
"You assume the uploaded answer is going to be a literal answer and so this one generated a double take," says Kline, who also serves as producer on the sci-fi franchise "Star Blazers," currently in development at Skydance. "And then you realize, Oh, I'm not actually reading an answer to the question—I'm reading a fictional story about how it would play out if it did happen. The story just pulled me in and the guy's voice was so interesting that right away I could see it being a film project."
If the show gets made, the answer's author will likely see a small payday from his expected consulting credit. But Variety says Quora—a startup with absolutely no revenue—will be cut out of the deal entirely.
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