Digital Spy caught up with Collider creator Nuno Bernardo to talk about the ambitious multi-platform project.
Tell us about Collider.
"In the development of Collider, we were inspired by the work of JJ Abrams and sci-fi post-apocalyptical movies like the Terminator saga, where the world collapsed because of the machines. We pitched Collider as Lost meets Terminator. We were in love with the concept of putting average anonymous people in a challenging environment. We put six random people in the future where the world collapses, and gave them the mission of saving mankind.
"Collider World is a sci-fi multi-platform project that combines TV and web series, exclusive access to pre-series story lines, mobile games and online graphic novels available on the App Store and Google Play."
How much research did you do into the Large Hadron Collider?
"Catriona Scott, our development executive at the time, was involved in the production of the comic books and wrote the webisodes. She did extensive research on everything Collider and CERN related, reading several books and researching dozens of documents. Some of those documents were then used in the set by Peter's character during the shooting of the web series."
Are you concerned about fueling the speculation/scaremongering surrounding CERN?
"We hope not. We are not criticising their work. We are not against science. We just wanted to create a fictional story based on their experiments. It is the eternal 'what if?' scenario. What if these experiments are putting the world out of balance? The 'what if' is always a good starting point to a nice story."
What formats is the story being told in? How do they tie in together?
"The Collider story is being told in comic book format, one per each character of the story. Each comic book is divided into two parts: their life and back-story before they jump to the future, and then what happens in the future to each character. This back-story will allow the audience to know the characters before the feature film (that we are shooting next September) comes out.
"The web series featuring Iain Robertson in the role of Peter Ansay is the initial incident that starts the Collider story world: when he decides to sabotage the Large Hadron Collider and by mistake creates a time-travelling machine. The mobile game is set in the future, to allow the player to become one of the characters and to make the same journey - but an interactive journey - as the characters do in the book. We also have an eBook version of the initial story hosted at Wattpad.com that allows audiences to better understand the world we are creating and the characters.
"We paid special attention to the way these elements were created as they need to be at the same time, self-contained content products (for the audience that doesn't want to follow the full interactive experience) and also to make sure each product complemented the other content pieces, making the full experience much richer."
Were the film and comic developed closely together?
"Every single piece of Collider content was developed as a complementary piece to all the others to create a deeper and richer experience. We don't like to repurpose content from one media to the other. Each media has its own language, rhythm and pace, so we need to respect what audiences expect from each media experience."
What was it about the project that made you want to develop it in this format?
"Our approach to storytelling is to create a universe (or storyworld) and then divide that big story into different, self-contained pieces and distribute them in different media. The reason for this approach is to connect with the audience and fans on all the different media they use during the day. The story can follow the audience and be there with the audience, whatever they are doing, whether browsing on the Internet, using a mobile phone or just reading a book."
How will the comic be distributed?
"The Collider comics are being distributed in two different ways: as individual comics, available through our own Collider Comics app for Apple iOS and Android. Fans can download it for free and will get two free comics. To get the remaining four comics, fans will need to do an in-app. Individual comics can also be bought from the Comic+ app from iVerse.
"The six comics were put together as a graphic novel and that is available as an eBook on Amazon for Kindle, on Apple iTunes for the iPad (through the iBookstore) and soon as there is a printed paperback collectors' edition, that will be available on Amazon and all the internet book stores."
The Collider world can be explored in the comics app and mobile game, with the first issue of the comic available for free. Webisodes of the web series are released weekly.
