Q: Do you have a schedule for Season 5 writing, shooting, production, and broadcast? [Tony Harris]A: We do not have air dates yet, but I expect that we will broadcast the final season in early 2008 or in spring 2008. But nothing has been decided. We are writing now and will begin shooting the final season next spring.
Q: How do you feel about the leaked screeners, illegal downloads and bootlegs? Was it worth it to get renewed? Was providing full season screeners your idea or did it come from HBO? Did you consider any re-shoots or re-edits to thwart this activity? [Pu, jeslove]
A: This America. You gotta let 'em play.
More seriously: The season was in the can when we sent the full screeners to critics, so reshoots were never in the cards. And in truth, we wouldn't alter the plotline to thwart bootleggers. That's tail-wagging-dog shit. It was my idea to provide the full season and HBO concurred. Job one was to get the maximum bounce from critics and pick up both audience and cultural awareness of the show. We succeeded and so, the show will be able to finish on proper terms. Based on the reaction from critics who had the whole season in front of them when the show premiered, I would not do anything differently, or argue for a different strategy -- despite the obvious downside.
How do I feel about it? I'm most disappointed in the viewers with bootlegged copies who have consistently posted spoilers on websites and impaired the viewing experience of others. I find that to be selfish and not a little bit infantile -- the sort of behavior that denotes someone who is unable to, say, sustain a sexual act for more than a few seconds, thereby proving themselves a huge disappointment to any and all partners. Yeah, I'd definitely say that any asshole, who, armed with a bootleg copy of a show, posts a clip of a major character being killed on YouTube or headlines a website posting with "XXname hereXX R.I.P." has pretty much defined himself before the world as a hopeless, useless premature ejaculator.
But other than that, what can I say? The calculations that HBO makes when deciding whether to renew The Wire include the assessment of all possible revenue streams -- which is to say, the DVDs matter. We are not The Sopranos, bringing in money hand over fist. And every year, our budget grows and the show becomes more expensive to produce. In seeing this show through to the end and getting enough money to do so properly, every little bit that we can offer to HBO and Time Warner helps. The bootleggers show no respect for that reality. As it happens, after the critics weighed in, we had enough gravitas and goodwill to get the renewal, but if things were any tighter, the loss of DVD revenue and, indeed, subscription revenue, could easily have been the last nail in our coffin.
I'd probably harbor more personal anger if my union, the WGA, had managed to do a decent job of protecting the interest of writers in DVD and video sales, but as it stands, we don't see much from the studios given the weakness of the collective bargaining agreement on this point. So while the bootleggers are taking some coin from writers, actors and directors -- mostly it's studio money. But even so, on an ethical basis, anyone who steals and copies intellectual property is, well, a shithead. That's true whether it's a book, a song or a film. People work hard to bring this stuff into the world; they risk a great deal and devote their best efforts to making it matter. They deserve the appropriate reward when something that they brought into the world has merit and value; certainly they deserve it more than someone who pockets a press screener and runs off some copies. But it ain't about deserving, is it?
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