CW Seed Digital Series Backpackers to Air This Summer

The CW has announced that CW Seed digital series Backpackers is making the leap on-air, as the network has ordered 10 original half-hour episodes set to premiere this summer.

“Since launching last year, one of our missions for CW Seed was for it to serve as an incubator for new talent and new ideas,” said Rick Haskins, Executive Vice President, Marketing and Digital Programs, The CW.  “We’re very excited to see Backpackers turn from a short-form digital series into a full-length broadcast television show, and we are continuing to look at CW Seed for other possibilities to transform content and for creative new ways of doing business.”

Starring Noah Reid (Titanic) and Dillon Casey (Nikita), Backpackers follows best friends Ryan and Brandon as they search for the former’s missing fiancée and deal with the questions facing all twenty-somethings – what they want out of their lives, who they want to be, etc. In the process of trying to find his bride-to-be, aspiring writer Ryan’s journal ends up being posted online, putting him as close as he’s ever been to his dream of being a published author. Now all he has to do is track down the person who stole the journal in the first place, but along the way, he parties with Brandon and Brandon’s slacker brother Andrew (Giacomo Giannioti) all the way from Thailand to Canada. Will Ryan ever be able to find the journal if he’s not entirely focused on getting it back?

You can get a look at CW Seed, the network’s hub for original online content, here. A sample of Backpackers, which joins a growing summer slate for The CW that includes Famous in 12 and Masters of Illusion, is below.

Do you think Backpackers will be able to find an audience on-air? Could we see more web series make the leap from digital to on-air if Backpackers does well? Is this the show to put The CW on the road to a comedy bloc in a future season?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB077nQ9qTM