Pulling Plug on "Project Greenlight?"

Fri., May. 13, 2005 4:45 PM PDT by Charlie Amter

Project Greenlight may have hit a red light.

Chris Moore, who masterminded the Bravo reality show with pals Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, said Friday that the movie-making documentary series has likely aired its final episode.

The synergistic Greenlight finds neophyte directors and screenwriters via an Internet contest and shoots them as they try to make a movie for a TV reality show. The film is then released theatrically once the season ends.

Damon and Affleck conceived Greenlight as a way to discover would-be Spielbergs and give them a chance to make a movie. They cited their own Oscar-winning success with Good Will Hunting as the prototype.

The first two seasons of Project Greenlight aired on HBO, but the premium cable net axed the series in 2003. Bravo quickly snapped up broadcast rights and expanded the show from a half-hour to an hour. The nine-part third season wrapped Thursday.

However, Greenlight's ratings dwindled over the course of the season, jeopardizing the future of the show.

"Last night was probably the last new episode of Project Greenlight ever," Moore writes in his blog at Bravotv.com.

"I am sorry to be reporting this here, but anyone reading this blog is a devoted and loyal Project Greenlight fan. You have been loyal and vocal and true fans of what we have tried to do, so I want you all to know the truth first."

Further, Moore has left Live Planet, the multimedia company that coproduced Project Greenlight, to form his own company.

Another factor hurting the series' long-term viability is the split between Disney and Miramax bosses Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Miramax released the first two Project Greenlight films and its horror subsidiary, Dimension, will release the third season flick, Feast, later this year. Without Disney's deep pockets at their disposal, the Weinsteins are presumably reluctant to gamble on unproven talents.

While the filmmaking contest series drew a rabid, if small, following, the first two releases--season one's Stolen Summer and 2003's The Battle of Shaker Heights--both bombed at the box office.

This past season, Greenlight eschewed the coming-of-age plots of its first two seasons' films in favor of a more commercial horror flick called Feast.

Feast has no official release date, although producers say it will likely be out during the holiday season.