Today in Party Down/Firefly/Freaks And Geeks news, Netflix is reportedly talking with 20th Century Fox regarding its freshly-cancelled time-travel drama Terra Nova. Netflix has been interested in producing its own shows for a while, licensing the Scandinavian dramedy Lilyhammer and spending up to $100 million for the David Fincher-produced House Of Cards. Terra Nova would be another expensive pickup for it, especially if it wanted to produce a traditional 24-episode season this year (the first season was only 13 episodes), and it's probably a deal that would have to happen soon; the show's stars no doubt wish to start casting for pilots if they're going to be unemployed next year, as one already did, and the sets in Australia no doubt will have to eventually start being torn down if a deal doesn't happen soon.
FOX could afford to take a leap of faith on Terra Nova due to the advertisement money it was receiving for the ads aired during the show, and it wound up being a profitable show for the network; Netflix would need to see a bump in subscribers to make the pickup worthwhile. Personally, it seems unlikely that the sides would make such a costly deal work, unless they can find a way to bring down the series' $4 million-per-episode budget. I've never gotten the sense that many of Screened's readers necessarily cared a huge amount for Terra Nova, but if its episodes were freely streaming on Netflix at any time you wanted to see them, would that encourage you to check it out?
