NEWS & EVENTS

DETAILS COMING SOON

The Books, More Distractions and a New Attitude.

The first draft of the first series books were completed in the spring of 2010. As summer approached, advance copies were leaked to friends and family and the response was overwhelming. A grass roots readership program was begun but it failed to catch on with the general public. The idea of self-publishing was thrown around but the cost of doing it as a major release was just too great that this stage.

Soon after this, Douglas was deep into production on his two web series, "Miss Casting" (2010) and "No Chance At Love" (2011). As while in production on the latter, the first set of books were published through Lulu.com and made available at Barnes & Noble for their nook. However, there were no promotions and sales were very slim.

The Books and the Rachel Demo

When Douglas was able to find time to go back to work on Afraid, two major developments were made. A colleague of his suggested that he turns the series in a book to capitalize on the wave of movies that were being made out through this method (Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, etc). In the fall, work on the books began and so did the idea of shooting a demo of the infamous "Robert and Rachel" scene that serves as a major turning point in the first season. The original cast member who played Rachel was out of the business, so the search for a new one began. Once casting was complete, filming began in November with a single day of re-shoots the following January. However, when the footage was being digitized, one of the tapes was eaten in the machine and lost forever.

The New "Afraid" and The Legendary Table Reads.

As filming of "The Woman Beside Me" was winding down, the decision was finally made to expand the script of "afraid" into a series with the idea of marketing it for HBO or Showtime. With this, some peripheral characters were expanded and new stories were added to the existing ones, giving it the scope of a massive web of drama and intrigue. To push the effort ahead, another round of auditions was held and the decision to conduct a series of table reads for the first season was made.

After finding the right people for the cast, the tab;e reads commenced. It wasn't long before members of the cast were referring to them as "Acting Olympics." Inspired by these performances, Douglas began work on what would become the second season and, by the time the cast was finishing the second season of table reads, he was almost done writing the third season.

Then, abruptly, everything came to a halt when Douglas was forced to accept a new full-time job that demanded his complete attention. However, "Afraid" continued to haunt him.

2010

2011

2007

2009

A Shift In Focus and the First Round of Casting.

After showing the initial draft of the script in its incomplete form to some colleagues, the question was raised, "pare it down and make it a feature or develop it as a series and expand the stories?" As this question was raised, the first round of auditions began for a possible low budget feature version of the script. These auditions brought in the initial inspirations for the roles of Rachel, Mark and Brad. However, while dilemma over the length of the project continued, work stopped in favor of progress on the comedy pilot "Flushing Guppies" and the short thriller, "The Woman beside Me."

2005

2004

First Outlines of "Afraid" are Drawn.

After completing his feature script, "Schism," Douglas Knox begins to outline and write script that will eventually become "Afraid." Initially it is conceived as a film much like Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia" and is destined to be a lengthy epic. However, the storylines spiral out of control and after passing the three hour mark, the script still isn't anywhere near the end.

2012

Amazon, The Kindle and the Live Performance

In the late summer of 2012, the listing for "afraid" on Lulu.com was pulled. Amazon.com had a program where if you listed the book exclusively with them for 90 days, they gave you ways to promote your book all over the world. The first weekend that "Afraid" was live on the site, over 2,000 copies were moved in the US,UK, India, Germany, Spain and France. Over the next three weeks, the total count blew up to over 5,000 copies worldwide. At the same time, Facebook and Twitter accounts were set up and sales of the book began to grow.

On November 17th and 18th, PKE debuted the live stage performances of Episodes 1 & 2 starring Leilani Wyatt, Jeff Elam, Katelyn Bowyer and Dawn Michaels. The show implemented elements of live theater, filmed segments and narration taken from the text of the books. Both shows nearly sold out based on advance ticket sales alone. More performances are planned for 2013 as well as adding more episodes to the slate.

2012