HBO working on a ‘choose your own adventure’ series

Acclaimed film director Steven Soderbergh teased a year ago that he would create an HBO show that would allow viewers to have a ‘choose your own adventure’ engagement with viewers allowing them to affect the outcome. Until recently there was no other juicy details on the project beyond actors Sharon Stone and Garrett Hedlund being attached to it and it would be titled ‘Mosaic’, but this week Soderbergh revealed more.

Viewers will be able to interact with the story of Mosaic through an app on their phones or tablets, but it will not directly changed the story as the show will remain in a “fixed universe” according to Soderbergh’s interview with Film Comment. The app connected to the show is expected to allow viewers to rearrange the story to their own liking, giving them a modified experience. That’s too far off ‘choosing your own adventure’. 

Soderburgh states the show has a “linear episodic version” due there being simply too much content for an app, before he even pitched it to HBO. The app version will be released in November. It’s not clear. As for the story, Soderburgh gives us a taste of how it will involved a murder and history related to it.

“It’s a murder. Not a murder mystery so much. There are two different time frames, one contemporary and one four years ago. This case that everyone thought was solved gets reexamined with interesting results. So you get to go back and forth depending on who you want to follow at what point. It seemed to be a kind of story that benefited from this multiverse perspective. The writing and the editing of it was tricky. The giant board that [writer Ed Solomon] and I had was a real head-scratcher.”

This sounds very interesting way to take television which is already really good right now, into an exciting new direction. Also it will give you more reasons to keep your HBO subscription once ‘Game of Thrones’ is done.