Syfy letting viewers create new movie

8:00 PM PDT 6/21/2010 by James Hibberd, AP

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Fans can vote, pitch ideas at newly launched production site

Syfy is giving online fans a chance to write and design every aspect of an upcoming Saturday night creature feature.

The network is launching a production site, B Movie Mogul, where fans can vote and pitch ideas for the film, from title, creatures, wardrobe, dialogue and character deaths to promotional taglines.

The resulting "script" will be shot as a two-hour Syfy original movie to be released next year.

"We constantly have fans e-mailing with compliments, complaints and questions about our movies, and this is a way of involving the fans in a new way," said Thomas Vitale, executive vp programming and original movies. "This is where entertainment is going and just the start of many more things of this nature for Syfy."

Syfy is teaming with entertainment site IGN on the site; the partnership will last 15 months and launch Friday. The first stage will have fans voting on one of three overall concepts for the movie: a 2010 apocalypse story, a Bermuda Triangle-set creature feature or a Roswell, N.M.-set alien movie.

But the venture raises the question: What if fans create a lousy movie?

"When you have a lot of people working on something, good ideas will come out of it," Vitale said. "We will have something that will be entertaining."