LiveJournal launches first social media TV series
LiveJournal is to launch, Ж Men, Russia’s first online TV series in to be broadcast by a social media platform. The first episode will be broadcast from LiveJournal.ru at 11am on 15th July.
Ж Men tells the story of a gang of Russian superheroes with weird powers. Over six short episodes the series charts the problems which the superheroes encounter having accidentally drunk the mysterious “Potion Ж” which gave them wacky powers. The story revolves around attempts by the superheroes to deal with the severe super villain who seeks to destroy Moscow by unleashing team of evil mutants led by the Incredible Alc and Fearsome Svoi.
The leading characters of Ж Men are :
- Booze Beloyar
Special powers: a master with the light saber with an evil laugh and a keen sharp tactical mind
Unique characteristic: will never be seen without his Darth Vadar mask and rabbit ears - Semyon Chotkiy
Special power: in the face of danger he becomes both an intellectual genius and super sensitive
Unique characteristic: can argue his attackers into submissions (sometimes) - Lara Cupidon
Special power: the ability to make people fall in love with each other by simply touching them
Unique characteristic: a very, very large pair of breasts - Stepan Kiyanka
Special power: he sticks to wood like a magnet sticks to metal
Unique characteristic: has Pinocchio (Buratino) permanently perched to his shoulder - Tetya Koshka (Auntie Cat)
Special power: as feline as cat
Unique characteristic: extreme laziness and an inability to follow orders - Beast
Special power: can turn at will into a terrifying Chihuaha
Unique characteristic: terrified of cats especially of Tetya Koshka
The concept for Ж Men was created by an in-house team in SUP, LiveJournal’s owners, and developed in partnership with M.A.M.A. a production company, whose team previously worked on many us high-profile projects for Russian TV – sitcoms, animated series and vertical projects. ZH Men been directed by Konstantin Demidov, who previously played Vadik in well known MTC commerials and currently is a theatrical and video director.
Andrey Podshibyakin, the Editorial Director of LiveJournal in Russia and the creative force behind Ж Men, said about the new series, “Super hero films and TV shows are one of the most popular contemporary genres. We wanted to make our own version and bring to life a new set of characters. LiveJournal already has many communities which follow super heroes across the globe, we wanted to give LiveJournal users their own homegrown Russian stars.”
After today’s first episode the second show will be broadcast at 11.00am on Friday 18th July the next four shows will then be shown every Tuesday and Friday for the next two weeks.
The new series is a major step for LiveJournal.com and is the first such project which they have run anywhere in the world where the site is offering users a chance to view original video content produced by the LiveJournal team. It will be broadcast on a video player which has been developed in-house by the SUP technology team.
Commenting on the launch of Ж Men Edward Shenderovich, SUP’s director of strategy said, “The launch of Ж Men is an important day for LiveJournal in Russia. Once again LiveJournal is experimenting with new ideas in Russia, we hope that others will follow. We believe that Ж Men will have a great following in LiveJournal, we decided to produce a comedy series as we know from global research that comedy is second place after news as the most popular video content viewed online. We are already planning our next series and we hope that the LiveJournal community we’ve built becomes a forum for users to suggest their own ideas and story lines which we will introduce in the successive shows.”