'Occulterers', 'Hurtling Through Space', Headline Babelgum's Sci-Fi Block

Babelgum has been on a web series roundup of late, and these guys are moving fast. With news coming just two weeks ago of indie sci-fi series The Crew jumping ship to the online network as its news home for season 2, a fresh new batch of sci-fi series have followed suit. Today Babelgum announced three new original series, several of which are helmed by some web series notables, to make up the bulk of the sci-fi/horror comedy channel.

Launching today is a new series from Goodnight Burbank creator Hayden Black—no not The Cabonauts, which we’re still waiting on—but a hastily assembled paranormal comedy The Occulterers. The “interactive comedy and horror series” stars Black as one of his inventive characters, Hervé Villechez, this time part of a four-person Transylvanian ghost hunting crew.

Black’s new series took just two weeks from concept to production, and that includes inking the deal with Babelgum. “It’s been an exhilarating experience; from pitching it on a Monday, writing it over 2 days, to shooting it the next week,” said Black over email. “I still think it’s far better than it has any right to be.”

For casting, Black tapped a pair of Buffy vets in James C. Leary (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and indie web series Lost Angeles) and Camden Toy. Also on board on the hunt are Ellen Sandweiss (Strike.TV’s Dangerous Women, The Evil Dead) and Amy Kline (I <3 Vampires).

Michael Davies, the Streamy-nominted director of After Judgment, has a series of his own in the lineup. Hurtling Through Space at an Alarming Rate! stars Davies alongside TheStream.tv’s Live from the Future host Stuart Paap. The “golf and game-obsessed, popculture buffs” are literally hurtling through space, in their apartment, in an absurd comedy somewhere between Hitchhiker’s Guide and Up. The Captain Films team just wrapped shooting up in Vancouver and the series is set for November 2 online debut.

Though not a Babelgum original, popular gamer comedy The Guild

(season 1) is somewhat oddly lumped into this new sci-fi channel as well, despite not being either horror or sci-fi. It is however the most widely-known on the slate and it’s pretty obvious why it’s in there. And finally, Cannibal Run, a zombie spoof on the outlawed 70’s cross country race is in the works.

Flash Mobs?

In what has to be a first for a web series promotion, Babelgum is organizing two flash mobs in Los Angeles this week to draw attention to the new Sci-fi and Horror channel on the site. The first one is a vampire-themed flash mob streamed live in partnership with horror blog DreadCentral.com on Halloween at 6:17 PM at Mexico in West Hollywood…during the annual WeHo Halloween Carnaval. Uh, just a hunch, but flash mobbing an already 250,000-deep mob of drunk costumed crazies is unlikely have the desired shock effect.

There’s another one later that night at the Art of Elysium fundraiser at the W Hotel in Westwood, which is more like a flash donation, since that’s what it takes to get in. Either way, the @theocculterers Twitter feed is where to go to follow the mobs’ latest.