Matt & Ben: Start Me Up
If that whole movie star thing doesn't work out for Ben Affleck, he might just have a career ahead of him as an executive producer of reality television. Affleck and a couple of civilians (Sean Bailey and Larry Tanz, producing under the LivePlanet shingle established by Ben and better half Matt Damon) are takin' care of business with American Start-Up.
The 10-episode Spike TV show challenges eight entrepreneurs to make the most of $50,000 in seed capital for a start-up: May the most profitable business plan win.
"We believe in the contribution and independent spirit of the American entrepreneur," Affleck said in the official press announcement. "And we are excited to work with Spike TV to bring these stories to their audience."
Start-ups are a risky business, but the show-biz types plan to recruit some corporate-raider types to winnow out the weak from the strong with a series of challenges and tests, eventually handing the winner a substantial follow-on round of funding.
American Start-Up was apparently inspired by Bailey, Damon and Affleck's experiences setting up LivePlanet.
Spike TV execs, who are predicting a 2005 premiere date, can only hope that Start-Up takes after Damon's side of the family.
Damon's latest, The Bourne Supremacy, has chased $65 million into Universal's coffers since last Friday.
Spike TV can also take to the bank the success the twosome shared with their previous reality series Project Greenlight, which is now moving to Bravo for its third season, after HBO televised the show's first two reality filmmaking forays. (Less successful were LivePlanet's Push, Nevada and The Runner, but let's not even go there.)
According to Bravo, the nine episodes of Project Greenlight 3 should air early in 2005. This year sees the gang attempting to produce Feast (about man-eating, flying beasties who attack a dive bar one cold winter's night), from tyro scribes Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunston, as directed by tyro helmer John Gulager.
What's next for multihyphenate men Matt and Ben, outside of expanding their global television empire?
Damon makes it back to the big screen twice in the coming months--first matched with 11 other stars in Ocean's Twelve, the sequel to, yes, Ocean's Eleven opening Dec. 10 in U.S. theaters, and then opposite Heath Ledger in Terry Gilliam's folk-tale frightener The Brothers Grimm, due February 2005.
Principal photography on Twelve wraps up shortly, but Damon won't get a vacation anytime soon. This summer he's scheduled to shoot the geopolitical thriller Syriana followed by The Departed, a Martin Scorsese prestige project costarring Leonardo DiCaprio set in Damon's beloved Beantown.
Affleck, meanwhile, is dabbling in politics, working to elect fellow Bay Stater John Kerry to be the next President of the United States. Affleck's putting in appearances as himself this week at the Democratic National Convention.
In addition to shilling for his fellow Massachusetts liberals, Ben also recovers from the you-know-who debacle, rolls around in his poker winnings and hooks up with the Christina Applegate to shoot the holiday release Surviving Christmas.
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