The Return of Coming Attractions

Patrick Sauriol is an internet veteran, as well as an insatiable movie buff. Starting in 1995,  the “cave painting” era of the Internet, Sauriol rolled out Corona’s Coming Attractions, a site devoted to the newest and most exciting developments in film (and based out of Vancouver). The site, the first of its kind, built an audience and broke movie news until 2003, when Sauriol took a job with an American magazine and shuttered the site.

But two years ago, Sauriol decided he’’d like to bring the site back and spruce it up for the 21st century. But he found that tracking down a decent web developer to update the site was no easy task. After a couple of false starts, he chose Vancouver-based Invoke, who he said did a great job of implementing his ideas.

“There were ups and downs but Invoke met the challenges and delivered a great looking website,” he said, and added that they “got” features he wanted to implement like Top 10 Lists or a Hypemeter.

The new site is an improvement on the old, but it will also draw on a database of over 3,000  films from the original Corona Coming Attractions site, which Sauriol will add shortly. In the meantime, he’s reporting on film projects slated from 2008 to 2012. But operating a one-man site isn’t easier than it was in 1995.

“It’s incredibly hard to run a one-man site. That’s part of why I took the opportunity to become a news editor for a magazinr back in 2003. The news never ever stops. One of the ways I’ve approached the design of CA 2.0 is that I want to be able to shape it that it can derive enough income to not just pay my living but also for other staff writers. The 1998-2003 time was filled with huge changes for hosting expenses, site operations and overhead. Now things have evened out and seem to be a lot more supportive for web publishers,” Sauriol said.

And the entertainment landscape has also changed, with video games, web content like Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible and movie tie-ins gaining prominence.

“DR. Horrible is something I’d cover under CA 2.0, and I’d probably place it under “Cool Culture” news right now. I considered adding a web content news category when developing CA 2.0 but right now I don’t think there’s enough ongoing, high profile web-centric content that a 10th news category on CA needs to exist just yet. Celebrity news is also a huge new and rising news category. I didn’t cover that on CA 1.0, and I also don’t want to be repeating celeb content that other sites like Lainey‘s or Perez‘s cover. The celeb news on CA is still finding its own voice and atmosphere.”