Movie Trivia Schmoedown’s latest endeavor aims to attract a pro-wrestling audience.
Kristian Harloff recently spoke with WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard to promote the return of Movie Trivia Schmoedown, which now comes in the form of a new series called Friday Night Titans. Last year, the Schmoedown capped off with “Schmoedown Spectacular VI” in December, but now the show returns with a new format that not only changed due to the pandemic putting a hold on live events, but Harloff also wants a show that calls back to wrestling’s golden era.
“It’s funny because I think now that we’re able to get back in the studio and now that we’re able to do what the show was originally intended for. I think the last two years, like everybody else, we’ve just been confirmed to the virtual Zoom and that’s never what the show was intended for. Nobody was as interested in seeing people play trivia on Zoom,” Harloff explained. “I started to think about it and an idea popped into my head and I was thought maybe I was doing this show wrong for like six years. And what I meant by that was the way we used to do it was we’d have elements of storylines and characters and you’d see little vignettes and you’d tune in to a match on Tuesday, you’d see a part of the story and the same thing would happen on Friday.
“But the problem was if you didn’t care enough about the competitors on Tuesday, you might miss a crucial scene because you didn’t tune in for that. I’m thinking why didn’t I make individual matches and rely on that when I’m not making Monday Night RAW or Dynamite, why am I not doing that? I should be doing that and when I first started doing it this way, it was 50% sports entertainment, 50% sports and the last two years has been like 90% sports, 10% sports entertainment because of how confined we were,” Harloff explained. “Now I’m going 80% sports entertainment, 20% sports and I’m gonna really lean on all the storylines and the high production and the feel and the must-watch television every week.
“So, we’ve been doing that and that’s where Friday Night Titans came from and the audience has been responding and that’s why I’ve wanted to talk to people like yourself because I believe that your audience obviously is the wrestling audience and they’re movie fans,” he added. “They’re big movie fans and they don’t know about this thing yet and they need to and that’s why we’re really leaning in heavy on Friday Night Titans.”
In some circles, professional wrestling is missing something and Harloff hopes “Titans” can bring some of that back. Calling back to the Golden Era of the ’80s and the Attitude Era of the ’90s, he says there’s definitely some things fans will notice that pay homage to the past, but he also wants to highlight some other things like letting players freestyle and find their own voice in the grand scheme.
“The Attitude Era, the Golden Era and people that were fans of that have been seeing it on Friday Night Titans. When I say that I wrote for WWE, it was for like a month but either way, it was a crash course to go there and I was there for the Attitude Era and for me, the two significant eras were the Golden and the Attitude era and you’ll absolutely see that stuff in Titans,” Harloff said. “I know that you guys cover this a lot and it’s been hammered down but I’m a part of the old-school mentality of the talent should have a beat of where they’re supposed to go, but let them riff, let them riff. There’s some people in the scripted element of it where they miss their lines and it’s just not as authentic.
“Back in the day, when they’d just let people go, that’s one of the main things that I think are missing. Look, I’m all for the narrative of you need to know where to go but let them go,” he noted, “ but let them show their personalities, let them really see the inside of who they really are and give them beats and that’s when the big personalities come out. Lets see who has it, some people do and some people don’t.”
Movie Trivia Schmoedown is the weekly pro-wrestling-meets-sports-style trivia competition series that pits contestants against each other in a battle to see who knows the most movie trivia. Schmoedown’s new series, Friday Night Titans, airs every Friday at 7 pm EST on the Schmoedown YouTube channel.
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