Reaper, Inc. — Part 18 — Producing 8
AKA Saying Good Bye
AKA For Now?
Who am I kidding with the second AKA — “For Now?”?
Spoiler Alert: Reaper, Inc. isn’t happening. It’s dead.
I no longer believe Reaper, Inc. is happening and for my own mental well being I need to accept this fact and give up and all hope I’ll ever hear back from Filmaka.
Let me back track a bit and explain how I came to this conclusion. For over two years¹ I have been trying to reach out and get ahold of anyone there for just a minor update, even to just hear “We’ll get back to you”². I have yet to receive a return… anything.
Now I’ve gone back and forth a few times on how to write this post, what I wanted to say, and how to handle this. I actually have a full draft of a post detailing every communication attempt I’ve made over the almost³ past 2 years. I debated publishing that along with parts of this post but for various reasons decided not to⁴. For those of you who have read every post and think this sounds vaguely familiar, you’re not wrong, I have said similar things here and here.
This time though feels different. This time feels real. Heres why:
1: Filmaka have announced a new contest and are updating their social media handles somewhat daily trying to get traction on it.
2: They are spending e-blasts from email accounts I have reached out to.
3: I have asked repeatably if I could have the rights back if they didn't want to move forward only to not hear back.
4: They have removed or redirected the page on their site that congratulated me for my win to their home page.
Points 1–3 isn’t out of character for them in my experience and taken on their own wouldn’t change my increasingly bearish opinion on getting to make Reaper, Inc. It’s point 4 thats the real nail in the coffin. I do have a web development background and from the looks of it does look like they redirected all past winner pages to the home page so it could be nothing but given I’ve been trying to get the rights back, and it’s been almost 2 years³ since I’ve heard anything from there, it looks pretty damming.
As much as I hate to say it because other winners got to make their series⁵, for me this wound up being a big scam for me/my team. Not only did I waste a fair portion of my time/life expecting to make Reaper, Inc. but they own the rights to it without ever paying me for them. Even if I wanted to make it on my own I couldn’t without the risk of getting sued for violating their IP⁶ that I created and was never paid for.
I looked into it. It would be far too expensive to get an entertainment lawyer to draft/send a letter in the hopes of getting the rights back. Even if I got the rights back Reaper, Inc. is an expensive production that I couldn’t afford to make on my own without crowdfunding or other sources of funding.
Quite frankly at this point, as much as it really sucks, I just need to move on. Other than spending money I don’t have and possibly having to go into litigation I have to accept the coolest thing⁷ that’s happened to me film wise wound up just being a major — let down.
I think the real lesson here is before signing the rights to anything over, make sure you get paid for it.
Thanks for sticking it with me this far.
Sorry for the disappointing conclusion.
1: 05/19/2021 is my first attempt to get ahold of them.
2: I called and was told that on 07/30/2020.
3: At the time of writing this anyway, 03/27/2023.
4: I may still publish it but don’t expect me to.
5: Snares of the Devil, The Crooked Tower, and Sydney Sleuthers.
6: I thought about releasing/attaching the script to episode 1 here but for the reason’s stated above it’s not a good idea.
7: At least at the time of winning, 02/25/2020.
UPDATE 03/06/2023: Somehow theres more.
Curious how we got here? Start here.
You can follow me on Instagram here.
If you really want you can follow Reaper, Inc. On Instagram here.
P.S. Filmaka didn’t directly sponsor this blog other than agreeing to give me $35,000 to make a web series. They did however agree to let me publish a blog describing the making of it.
