‘Hollywood Wasteland’: A New Kind of End of the World

Why is the End of the World so hot right now? After a slew of zombie-related news the last several weeks, yet another Apocalypse-related series has hit the internet. But what’s wonderful about this theme is there is room for all genres and styles.

Take Hollywood Wasteland, for instance. In the first episode we see Steampunk references, an homage to the Terminator films, a wacky cast of characters including an actress who thinks headshots of her as a chimney-sweep are going to set her career ablaze and a basement dwelling conspiracy-theorist whose favorite phrase is “it all ends…today”. Based on the premise of the show, he’s probably about to be right…

Written by Caley Bisson (who also stars) and Ellwyn Kauffman, directed by Matt Newcomb and produced by Jeff Winkler (The Legend of Neil), Hollywood Wasteland plays with themes we’ve seen over and over (the vapidness of Hollywood, sending protection for the savior of the world back through time) yet melds them together in an interesting and unique way. What if instead of Arnold appearing naked in a giant fireball it was a beautiful blond appearing in a kid’s bouncy house?

Director Newcomb’s background is short films but was looking for a way to take characters through a longer journey. “This whole project started last fall when I was out of work from my job as a video game programmer and wanted to use the opportunity to work on a video project,” Newcomb told Tubefilter. “My good friend Caley Bisson had an idea for a web series about how, if the end of the world came, we’d still probably act about the same way we do now, instead of becoming heroes. We worked on the idea for a while and came up with the script for the first few episodes.”

Newcomb went on to explain: “It was challenging for many reasons. We’re self-funded, so doing what we could for as little money as possible was a concern for us, especially with the type of story we’re trying to tell. A robot sent from the future, nuclear explosions, all the other fun end of the world stuff. This was the biggest project a lot of us had worked on as well.”

The Hollywood Wasteland team is gearing up to shoot additional episodes of the series, hoping for a 7 episode first season. The show is being distributed by KoldCast TV. The show also promises some fun web series regulars to make appearances, including Craig Frank (A Good Knight’s Quest, Compulsions).