‘Emma Approved’ Wins Emmy Award For Interactive Storytelling

At the Emmy Awards, Bernie Su’s digital adaptations of Jane Austen are two for two. Emma Approved, Su’s web series version of the novel Emma, has won an Emmy Award for Original Interactive Program.

The Original Interactive Program category celebrates series that successfully link together multiple platforms, and no one accomplishes that goal better than Su. His previous Austen adaptation, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, won an Emmy in 2013 thanks to its own transmedia touches. For Emma Approved, Su and his team took interactivity to another level by linking together video, social media, images, text, and music in a manner that invited fans to engage with their favorite characters. It’s an approach that impressed us, and it comes as no surprise that the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences took a shine to it as well.

Emma Approved’s Emmy win was announced as part of a press release that revealed the victors in multiple interactive media categories. AMEX Unstaged: Taylor Swift Experience, a branded event that produced Swift’s hugely popular “Blank Space” music video, also took home a statuette, as did digital-conscous TV shows Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and @midnight.

Aside from Emma Approved and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, other winners of the Emmys’ Interactive Program award have included Dirty Work and Just A Reflektor. With his most recent win, Su is the first person to earn two triumphs in the category, and based on his deep digital media and his current status (he recently launched a production company called Canvas Media Studios), we won’t be surprised if he eventually goes three for three.