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Amazon signs Woody Allen to his first TV show

LOS ANGELES — Amazon.com said director Woody Allen will create his first television series for the Web retailer, enlisting an accomplished yet controversial filmmaker to add video-streaming content and extend its clout in Hollywood.

Director Woody Allen arrives for the premiere of his film "Magic in the Moonlight" in New York, in this file photo taken in July last year. Amazon.com Inc said it signed Allen to write and direct a new TV series for its video streaming service. The company said it had ordered an entire season of the "Untitled Woody Allen Project", Allen's first TV series. Photo: Reuters

Director Woody Allen arrives for the premiere of his film "Magic in the Moonlight" in New York, in this file photo taken in July last year. Amazon.com Inc said it signed Allen to write and direct a new TV series for its video streaming service. The company said it had ordered an entire season of the "Untitled Woody Allen Project", Allen's first TV series. Photo: Reuters

LOS ANGELES — Amazon.com said director Woody Allen will create his first television series for the Web retailer, enlisting an accomplished yet controversial filmmaker to add video-streaming content and extend its clout in Hollywood.

Allen, 79, will write and direct the untitled half-hour series that has been ordered up for one full season, Amazon said in a statement today (Jan 14). The show will be available to subscribers of Amazon’s Prime service, which costs US$99 (S$132) per year for access to a library of digital shows and movies, along with two-day shipping and other perks.

The deal with Allen aligns with Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos’s strategy of producing original shows and competing with Netflix and HBO, which have also attracted viewers with exclusive content. Amazon picked up two Golden Globe Awards this week for its series Transparent, which beat out programmes from HBO, the CW Network and Netflix to win best TV series, musical or comedy, as well as best actor for Jeffrey Tambor, who plays the main character.

Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles, said viewers probably won’t care about Allen’s personal life, which has been marked by controversy over his marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Allen’s former wife Mia Farrow, and accusations of child molestation by Dylan Farrow, Allen and Farrow’s daughter.

The bigger question is whether Allen’s success in film will translate to the short-form video people consume online, because “TV is not the same as movies, and few writers or directors make the transition well”, Pachter said.

A spokeswoman for Allen, who has denied Dylan Farrow’s claims, said the director wasn’t available for an interview. A representative for Mia Farrow didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from her and Dylan.

PRIME PROGRAMMING

Allen, who won Academy Awards for co-writing and directing Annie Hall and for writing 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters and 2011’s Midnight in Paris, said of the new partnership, “I don’t know how I got into this.”

“I have no ideas and I’m not sure where to begin,” the comedic director said in the statement.

While the Seattle-based company doesn’t disclose how many of its customers pay for Prime, analysts’ estimates range from 20 million to 35 million subscribers. Amazon, which introduced Amazon Studios in November 2010, plans to start showing seven new shows this week, including an hour-long drama from director Ridley Scott that envisions what would happen if the Allies lost World War II and another providing video interpretations of New Yorker magazine stories. In addition, six new shows for kids will be released.

ORIGINAL PROGRAMMING

“No matter what you think of Woody Allen, his name is iconic and his brand is iconic, and it’s a bold move by Amazon to associate with one of the most iconic filmmakers working today,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst at industry researcher Rentrak Corp. “These are the kind of moves they need to make, coming off the win for ‘Transparent,’ which immeasurably raised Amazon’s profile.”

The studio, based in Santa Monica, California, is headed by Roy Price, the son of former Columbia Pictures chief Frank Price. The company has sought to differentiate itself from traditional TV networks by soliciting scripts online and asking viewers to vote on whether or not they like the initial episode.

The original programming initiative is aimed at luring more customers to Amazon’s library of digital shows and movies, which users must rent or buy even if they aren’t Prime subscribers. The shows also bring potential shoppers back to the Web retailer’s online storefront.

Amazon Studios is also part of Bezos’s push to invest in new areas to diversify the company’s businesses and create new income opportunities. In the past year, the CEO has rolled out new TV-streaming devices and a smartphone. Amazon also has more than 1 million customers for Amazon Web Services, a cloud-computing platform used by other companies to store data and run software over the Web. BLOOMBERG

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