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GeekNation to premiere new season of sitcom Holliston next year

posted 9 years ago by J-LawForever
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When the sitcom Holliston suffered both the death of a cast member and the folding of its network in 2014, the show’s future seemed grim. But Entertainment Weekly can exclusively reveal that Holliston, which centers around the misadventures of two aspiring filmmakers, is set to return for a third season next year. Original cast members Adam Green (who is also the show’s creator, writer, and showrunner), Joe Lynch, Laura Ortiz, Corri English, and Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider will all appear.

The 10-episode season will premiere in the summer of 2016 on the GeekNation digital network, where real-life film directors Green (Hatchet, Digging Up the Marrow) and Lynch (Everly) already have a hugely successful podcast, The Movie Crypt. “It’s almost embarrassing to admit,” says Green in the official release announcing the deal with GeekNation, “but there we were on a quest to find a new outlet for Holliston where we could continue to creatively make the show our way, but also have it distributed on a platform where absolutely anyone who wants to watch it can easily find and enjoy it…and the answer was literally right in front of our noses the entire time.”

In Holliston, Green and Lynch play two horror-loving Hollywood hopefuls who work at a cable company in the titular Massachusetts town. English and Ortiz portray their respective girlfriends and Snider is the Green and Lynch’s sexually ambiguous boss. The first two seasons of the show also starred Dave Brockie as Green’s imaginary friend “Oderus Urungus,” the persona Brockie adopted as singer for the rock band GWAR. Holliston has also featured cameos from a raft of cult horror actors, including Tony Todd (Candyman), Kane Hodder (Hatchet, the Friday the 13th franchise), and Danielle Harris (the Halloween series, Stake Land).

Holliston, which is produced by Green’s company ArieScope Pictures, premiered in April, 2012, on the horror-centric cable network FEARnet and season 2 screened the following year. Green was developing season 3 when, in March 2014, Brockie died from a heroin overdose. A month later, it was announced that FEARnet was effectively being dissolved by parent company Comcast.

Over the past year, Green repeatedly attempted to find a new home for the show, a search he and Lynch detailed on The Movie Crypt, which ultimately resulted in the GeekNation deal. “In most cases, the trials and tribulations we have endured as a cast would mean the end of a series,” says Green. “But this is Holliston and we are much more than just a sitcom. We are a bona fide family. By leaning on each other and embracing the overwhelming love and support of our fans, we never became disenchanted by our unfortunate circumstances or allowed our collective inspirational fire to go out.”

In the same release, Green’s costar Lynch, an excutive producer on Holliston, paid tribute to both Brockie and the show’s fans. “It’s crucial to note that Dave was so much more than just a cast member of Holliston,” he says. “He was a dear friend to all of us and his absence will be deeply felt by everyone in our cast and crew. For Adam especially, he not only writes every single episode but he was also the only actor on the show who shard scenes with ‘Oderus,’ so continuing the series without Dave is an extremely difficult task for him emotionally. It has been a very delicate and slow process to get outselves back to this point. Thankfully, we have an incredibly patient and understanding fanbase that has supported us unconditionally and that has mourned with us through all of this. Our fans appreciate that we’re real people who have to heal from our loss and that we’re not just fictional characters on their screens, despite the fact that we all play versions of ourselves in a way.”

Green believes Brockie would approve of Holliston going on without him. “As cliché as it might sound, no one would want to see Holliston continue more than Dave,” he says in the statement. “On the season 2 behind-the-scenes-Blu-ray making-of feature, Dave says directly to the camera that ‘Holliston is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’ It’s been a long heartbreaking road, but we’re at a point now where we’re back on our feet and we’re ready to laugh once again. Last week, the main cast got together to table-read some of the new material for the first time and we could all feel without a doubt that no one was laughing louder or harder than Dave.”

GeekNation was founded in 2012 by actress and CEO Clare Kramer and COO Brian Keathley. “With Holliston, Adam’s creation embodies the definition of intellectual humor combined with pop-culture creativity, creating what we believe is a cult phenomenon,” says Kramer. “We’re excited to partner on the third season, which will bring network-quality serialized programming to GeekNation for the first time.”

Pre-production on the third season of Holliston is scheduled to start early next year. The show will be produced by Cory Neal, Sarah Elbert, Will Barratt, and Peter Block and will be directed by Green and Sean Becker. For more about Holliston, check out the new Movie Crypt podcast, which debuts Monday at 10 a.m. PT, and opens with Green and Lynch being joined with Ortiz and English.

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/07/20/holliston-adam-green-joe-lynch-geeknation

So this is good news to hear! Love this show!

I've written a script with Jen in mind as the lead. It's a comedy Life As Liz. PM if interested.

[–] Adamint 9 years ago

You beat me to it, lol. I was just about to post this up! I'm so glad that it's coming back and I can't wait for it!

[–] J-LawForever 9 years ago

I know not many know about this show. But just love the comedy and heart to it.

I've written a script with Jen in mind as the lead. It's a comedy Life As Liz. PM if interested.

[–] VinnieRattolle 8 years ago

I really hope Kane Hodder returns. It's a shame that he only gets horror roles (and generally mute ones, at that) because he was surprisingly good at comedy.

[–] VinnieRattolle 8 years ago

Just discovered a long interview that Green did with Wicked Horror.. Here's an excerpt about season 3; there's more about Dave Brockie and Green's web series "Horrified" through the link.

http://www.wickedhorror.com/interviews/exclusive-interview-adam-green-talks-horrified-and-the-return-of-holliston/

WICKED HORROR: So any teases maybe about what’s going to be happening?

ADAM GREEN: The only teases I can really give, I mean like I’ve already said that Oderus will not be replaced, there’s not going to be somebody else from GWAR in the closet, there’s not going to be a different imaginary friend. I’m going to handle it and then the door will stay closed and that will be it. And I know fans mean well when they keep just chiming in with suggestions, like get Alice Cooper or get this one–you can’t do that. You can’t replace Dave, you can’t. Technically even if you could, if GWAR was like, “Use the costume and just get an impersonator.” I don’t want that, I couldn’t deal with it. The whole cast was very close with Dave but I’m the one who had all my scenes with him and he was my guardian angel, not just in the fantasy world on the show but even in real life, he was very much a mentor to me in terms of my passion to pursue something creative that wasn’t necessarily mainstream and that not everybody was going to get. So anyway, he’s not going to be replaced, and at the end of season two, the cable station was closed and Lance Rockett lost his job. I don’t want to give anything away, but obviously Lance is still going to be a part of the show, in fact his part is going to be a little bit bigger now, that’s one of the things I’m doing to address Dave’s absence. Now Lance is going to go through a midlife crisis where he starts second-guessing his whole lifestyle, everything he’s into, and trying on some different personalities out of desperation to find his way. So there’s going to be a lot of comedy in that, and I know Dee [Snider] is very excited about what I told him so far about what his character is going to do. I don’t know if there’s much else I can say without spoiling anything. I mean, things are pretty dire at the end of season two, and at the end of season three, they’re going to be 100 times worse.

WH: No!

AG: [Laughs] And that’s the thing, people only want to see us win, and if they win there’s no more show. There’s so much stuff that I purposely haven’t addressed yet. If you’ve noticed so far on the show, there’s never been a problem between Adam and Joe. They’re always in sync, you know it’s a little bit like The Odd Couple where Adam is a bit more realistic and Joe is just like whatever, it’ll work out, you’ll figure it out. But we can’t just keep trying to make the same short film over and over again, we have to start moving forward with that, and that just opens up a whole world of other problems, so I’m really looking forward to that stuff. Joe’s had dramatic scenes with Laura, I’ve had dramatic scenes with Corri and with Oderus, but he and I have yet to really share the spotlight and have to face something dramatic with each other. So season three is going to build to that and I’m really looking forward to it because I think it’s something that everybody who’s ever had a friend can instantly relate to it and has been there, so that’s really exciting. As excited as the fans are that now it seems like Adam and Corri are finally going to be together–maybe that’s going to work out, maybe it won’t. And I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that at some point in the season Laura is going to come back from Germany, because obviously we’re not going to get rid of Laura. But how many people actually thought we were?! I’m not nuts, like would Seinfeld have gotten rid of Kramer in season three? You don’t do that. So she will come back at some point. Yeah, you want to talk about somebody who was pissed–when she read the last page of season two, she was really upset! But that’s really it, that’s all I can say. There was so much stuff planned with Oderus, because he was a joke through most of it, even though within his bad advice, there was a way for Adam to find the path. But what I was building towards, and unfortunately I have to just move right into it now, that there were several times in season two where he says “Why can’t you just figure this out for yourself?” or just really being such an *beep* towards me about stuff. But what I was building towards was the fact that at some point, Adam is going to have to grow up and start dealing with things instead of running to his imaginary friend to help him. So there was a huge thing that supposed to happen with that–in fact, he [Oderus] was supposed to leave the show at the end of season three.

WH: Yeah, I remember you telling that story of what was supposed to happen to him on the podcast.

AG: The reveal at the end of season three was going to be that he was never really my friend, he was there because he was hiding because he upset them on his planet, and at the end of season three, they find him and take him away to kill him. So that was part of the cliffhanger at the end of season three and then season four was how I was going to deal with that. Dave was never on board with that storyline, like he was so pissed that there was ever going to be an episode that he wasn’t in. But I told him the whole thing and how it would all pan out and he was really excited about it, but that’s all obviously gone. And it’s hard to give a character a proper exit on a show when you don’t have them there to do it, and you don’t want to start doing body doubles or voiceovers, and I think one of the things that I have going for me that most shows don’t is that we do break the fourth wall a lot on the show, and so there’s no reason why the farewell to Dave can’t be 100% percent real, and not something that’s written and meant to have the audience laughing and stuff. I think people are going to be really happy with it. I’ve spoken to his family and they know what I’m going to do and everybody’s very happy about it, so that’s all I care about. But that’s one of the things, whatever I do it’s either going to be too much or too little, or not enough, so I’m just doing what I think is best and what the cast thinks is best, so it’ll happen and that will be it.

WH: I think whatever you do, it’s going to be great and it’s going to be respectful and the fans are really going to enjoy it.

AG: He just wouldn’t want some big, drawn-out, sappy thing, like he would be so pissed if I did that. If anything, he’s probably just so pissed that he’s not here right now. It’s definitely weird, but at least now, the cast has had so much time to mourn this that now it’s more about telling the funny stories and stuff. But to be completely honest, I am still a little bit worried about writing this next season because I’ll be on a tear and everything’s going great and then something happens. Two or three weeks ago we had to start doing inventory on all the props, and the stage, and the sets and everything, and Arwen [Adam’s dog] was just scratching at this one box. When we opened the box, it was [Oderus’s] Spooky Dan bear. In episode nine of season two, he threatens to move out because he feels like I take him for granted, and the only thing he’s bringing with him is Spooky Dan bear, which is this big teddy bear. And whenever we wrapped, everyone on the cast always asked for one thing. And you have to hold onto that stuff because you’re gonna use it again and if you let somebody leave with it, you don’t know what’s going to happen to it. But the one thing that Dave wanted was Spooky Dan bear. And I was like, “Okay you can take it but you can’t let this get wrecked, can’t let it get stolen, it has to be this bear.” and he was like “Dude, you can trust me, you can trust me,” and then he promptly forgot it in his dressing room when he moved out of his dressing room and so that’s what was in the box. It was weird that Arwen knew that there was something about that box, and so when they pulled it out, I was relieve that a) I have Spooky Dan bear again, and b) that it was just good to see it again. Then I hug it, and my friend Robert who was doing inventory with me, just kind of freezes and I’m like, “What?” And he says, “Look at the back of it.” And the whole back of it is stained with all of Dave’s grease paint from the costume, you know Oderus has painted on abs and, so in the scene he’s holding it against himself so he had sweat all over it. It’s one thing when you find an object that’s associated with somebody who passed away, but when it still has their sweat on it, it’s like it’s not real that they’re gone. So I haven’t written since, but I’ll get through it and keep going. But that’s one of the good things about the fact that we do have time before we shoot, because everybody is on other projects anyway so the earliest we could possibly shoot would be January or February so we have time. I’m not rushing it. Even if it’s two more weeks before I can write, that’s okay.