Renaissance Man
Ali Rasul, Renaissance Pictures’ new Director of Marketing, discusses all the latest goings-on at Xena’s production company…
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 06
XENA MAGAZINE: Can you tell us about your background, Ali, and how you became Head of Marketing at Renaissance Pictures?
ALI RASUL: I come from licensing/product development. Before joining Renaissance Pictures I worked on numerous feature films, including Godzilla, Men in Black and Starship Troopers - mostly in a product development capacity. Prior to that, I toiled away in magazine publishing as a marketing representative.
Most of our readers probably imagine life at Renaissance Pictures to be like the Hercules episodes Yes, Virginia, There is a Hercules and For Those Of You Just Joining Us… Is it?
Well, I haven’t witnessed any conspiratorial plots between my fellow co-workers - yet. But I’m new here, so who knows? [Laughs]
Honestly though, I love working here! The people are great and very dedicated to creating fantastic and exciting shows. I’m never quite sure what my day will be like - almost every day I’m presented with new and exciting projects. Right now I’m working on a possible launch of a Xena single from music in Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire. I’ll keep you guys posted as things develop.
Xena’s 100th episode, Seeds of Faith, recently won the joint-highest Nielsen rating of season five. Was that a nice surprise for everyone?
Actually, we weren’t really surprised because there had been a lot of build-up and a lot of interest in that particular episode. But we were all very happy with the response to Seeds of Faith. And everyone wants to keep the momentum going with the later episodes of the season.
A few weeks after Seeds of Faith’s premiere, US viewers saw Kevin Sorbo reprise the role of Hercules in the Xena episode God Fearing Child. Are there any plans for further solo Hercules adventures, perhaps in the form of a telemovie or even a feature film?
As far as I know, Kevin is busy working on his new television series [Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda]. So for now, there are no definite plans for a Hercules film or a television revival.
Hercules’ replacement shows, Cleopatra 2525 and Jack of All Trades, launched amidst a blaze of publicity in January. What’s the feeling at Renaissance about the reaction to the two shows?
We’re really happy about the response. The first ratings we’ve seen have been very strong, and the fans seem to have really taken to the shows. We did a sneak preview of Cleopatra at the big Xena convention here in Los Angeles, and the fans loved it. It went spectacularly well, especially considering that most people knew very little about the show.
During the run-up to Cleo and Jack’s premieres, Rob Tapert revealed that he wanted to produce a third hour of weekly Renaissance Pictures programming. Do you think that could really happen?
Oh, definitely. There are a lot of ideas on the table. There’s nothing that’s about to enter production right now, but we are constantly trying to come up with new shows. And we’re currently discussing ideas with a number of studios.