It’s been a difficult journey for Project Greenlight, the reality TV series produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Despite a promising return last fall, it has struggled to find viewers outside its niche audience, and that results in today’s bad news. HBO, the pay cable station who produced all four seasons, has decided not to pick up the series for a fifth season. But it might not be all bad just yet.
Although Damon is “shocked” that HBO decided not to host another season, the producer tells AP that they’re currently shopping the reality series around town, notably at the doors of Amazon and Netflix. And I honestly hope someone gives it life again. Although season four wasn’t necessarily its finest hour, it nevertheless remains a gripping, massively entertaining series, filled with juicy behind-the-scenes drama that still provides an enlightening education into the world of independent filmmaking.
Although last year’s season produced the miserably dull The Leisure Class, the season itself was still wickedly fun, and there’s always promise with this premise — especially with Damon and Affleck willing to return. Their older, wiser input on Jason Mann’s directorial debut didn’t make the film any better, but it provided interesting insight into how they’ve grown and challenged themselves as filmmakers, especially as Affleck himself is now a prolific, Oscar-winning director himself.
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HBO has had it rough these past few days, particularly with its president Michael Lombardo stepping down a few months back, which might explain why it didn’t get picked up again. That said, it would be a pity to see Project Greenlight end for good this time, although it’s hard to know if season five could produce a narrative as gripping and nail-biting as the rivalry between Mann and producer Effie Brown. We’ll have to wait and see if the series finds another home. It might still produce more bad movies, and its novelty has worn off a little, especially with Starz’s exceptionally underrated The Chair, but it deserves to live in the spotlight for another round.
