Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Monday, November 24, 2008 at 8:31 AM PT

 

Microsoft Locks Up The Guild

felicia-dayFelicia Day, creator of web series The Guild, said during her talk at NewTeeVee Live that she had some major sponsorship on news on the way. Looks like it’s a bit more than just that: The Hollywood Reporter writes that Microsoft has nabbed the exclusive rights to the second season of the series and will show it across the Xbox, MSN and Zune platforms.

Sprint will sponsor all 12 episodes of the season across the three Microsoft outlets and will have commercials attached as well as product placements within the show.

Day told us earlier this month that she rejected about 25 offers to sponsor the geek-friendly comedy, saying, “For me, an important part of the show is that I retain the rights to the show.” Her deal with the Redmond giant lets her keep the intellectual property rights to The Guild while collecting an up-front fee. This means that should The Guild follow in the footsteps of Sanctuary (another series where the creator held on to the IP) and move to TV, Microsoft won’t participate in any revenues generated from that.

New episodes will run on Microsoft properties for the first month and then move to the series’ home at watchtheguild.com, where Microsoft will continue to retain ad revenue generated. Also, new episodes will run day-and-date in 9 languages in 26 different countries that have Xbox Live.

Microsoft is not messing around when it comes to adding video content to the Xbox. It launched its line of original horror series this fall and just last week added Netflix streaming to the service. And Day is turning into quite the new media mogul herself, she’s got a deal to produce another gamer-related series for Machinima.com.

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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. Congrats Felicia!

    Now where can I get an embed of the Season 2 trailer for my blog?

    Tim Street on November 24th, 2008 at 10:57 am - Permalink
  2. [...] New TeeVee [...]

    Innovation « George Ruiz on November 24th, 2008 at 3:05 pm - Permalink
  3. [...] a également été interviewée durant l’événement, et annonçait quelques jours plus tard un partenariat avec Microsoft concernant la distribution de la prochaine saison de la mini [...]

    L’avenir de la convergence TV/Internet discuté à l’occasion de la dernière édition de la conférence NewTeeVee Live à San Francisco « (French)TechConnection on November 24th, 2008 at 6:44 pm - Permalink
  4. Great news for Felicia Day, The self-publishing route is moving forward and showing feasibility.

    As this process moves on there will be no need for a Microsoft, she could do all the cross promotion deals online, herself.

    Fagin on November 25th, 2008 at 12:17 pm - Permalink
  5. We met Felicia at NewTeeVee Live and Matt Boyd’s interview with Felicia just went live at:

    http://www.kwanzoo.com/social-trivia/a-conversation-with-felicia-day.shtml

    There’s a cool, embedded trivia quiz at the end with questions from “The Guild Season 1″ that the show’s fans will enjoy!

    Mani

    Mani Iyer on November 26th, 2008 at 6:19 pm - Permalink

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