Is the supposed ‘Gossip Girl: Epilogues on Netflix’ press release real? No — and here’s why

UPDATE: Josh Schwartz just tweeted out that Gossip Girl: Epilogues is not true. But in case you want to know how to spot a fake press release, please continue reading!

Fandoms freak out a lot, y’all. It’s crazy. But earlier today, when co-creator of Gossip Girl Josh Schwartz tweeted out that he had huge news for viewers of the show — that our minds would be “blown” — and then just an hour or two later a supposed leaked press release made rounds, it’s not hard to blame ’em.

Here’s the press release, which was posted on FanForum by a user named Chairfection:

April 17, 2012

FAKE EMPIRE AND WARNER BROS. TELEVISION TO RELEASE “GOSSIP GIRL: EPILOGUES” EXCLUSIVELY ON NETFLIX

Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage of entertainment company Fake Empire have come to an agreement with The CW to end the long-running ‘Gossip Girl’ series after the conclusion of its current season. In an unprecedented move, however, the company has reached a deal with Warner Bros. Television to conclude the series with a 7-hour miniseries tentatively titled ‘Gossip Girl: Epilogues,’ available exclusively through the Netflix streaming service.

“When Josh and I set out to adapt the ‘Gossip Girl’ novels into a television series we knew it’d be a struggle,” said Savage. “We’ve had our highs and lows, but we are all very proud of what we’ve accomplished. Ending it after this many years is bittersweet, but we’re very excited about what comes next.”

With more than 20 million streaming members in the United States, Canada and Latin America, Netflix, Inc. is the world’s leading Internet subscription service for enjoying movies and TV shows. For about US$7.99 a month, Netflix members can instantly watch unlimited movies and TV episodes streamed over the Internet to PCs, Macs and TVs. In all, more than 700 devices that stream from Netflix are available.

“My previous show, ‘Chuck,’ ended before its time. We were given a fair shake, but I don’t think anyone working on it really wanted it to end so soon,” said Schwartz. “With ‘Gossip Girl,’ I think we all feel the story has come to its natural conclusion. After the season 5 finale the landscape of the show is changed dramatically, in a very final way. All the major character arcs reach an endpoint of sorts. We didn’t originally plan it to be that way, but it came organically. When the writing was on the wall, it made sense to morph it more clearly into a series finale.”

“‘Epilogues,'” he continued, “isn’t something that we would’ve been able to do even five years ago. I love that technology has evolved in such a way that television can shift outside of its traditional constraints like this and kind of live on.”

The ‘Gossip Girl’ series finale airs on Monday, May 14 at 8/7c on The CW, with a DVD box set collecting The Complete Final Season expected in August 2012.

“‘Epilogues’ will pick up from where the series finale is left off, with these characters picking up the pieces and regrouping from the bomb that goes off, essentially reshaping all their lives and moving on,” said Savage. “The first and last episodes will focus on the entire group, while the other five will focus individually on the characters of Serena, Blair, Chuck, Dan and Nate. The format we envision is more movie-like and intimate than the show. We want to give these characters closure and do them justice.”

‘Gossip Girl: Epilogues,’ penned entirely by Schwartz and Savage, will enter production this summer, with a weekly release schedule expected to begin sometime in the fall.

Media Contacts:

For Warner Bros. Television Group
Scott Rowe
(818) 954-5806
scott.rowe@warnerbros.com

The poster even goes has far as creating a URL for the supposed press release (which goes nowhere). Now, there’s really only a couple of points that add to my credibility: (A) I spent about seven months interning at a post-production company in the PR department, which meant I wrote all of their press releases and (B) I read press releases all the time as part of this blog and previous blog. So, I may not have tons of experience, but I’m calling it a fake. And here’s why.

1. There’s no city.

The number one “rule” of writing a press release (okay, not really) is the city of its publishing. Every press release you have ever read has posted the city before it. Check out this October 13th press release from Time Warner — before the body of the press release begins, “LOS ANGELES” is written.

If you were to ask me, which I guess you have since you clicked to read this post, this is vehemently important to a press release. It’s the first thing you write! And it’s unfathomable that a supposed press release (which the user received by going to a website page that presumably went live before it was supposed to) wouldn’t have this on it already.

Quite honestly, that should be enough to debunk this “leak.” But if it’s not…

2. Stylistic conflicts with regards to show titles.

In that same press release linked above (Oct 13) and any other press release on Time Warner, the show titles are written with double quotation marks. For some reason, in the “leaked” press release, only single quotations are used. Now, single quotations would make sense if it were inside a quote already (which the writer does as well) but not outside of it.

Previous years of Time Warner press releases would italicize the show titles (which makes the most sense and I have no idea why they stopped doing that), but in recent years they have taken the double-quotation method. Single quotes makes no sense…as a person who loves the English language and loves grammar. Some people love music, I love grammar. So what?

3. Tone.

The language is way too opinionated in the wrong sense. Press releases make garbage sound like gold, but they aren’t written to shock you. G’head, read a press release or a thousand and see if any of them announce something like your friend would. They don’t. They’re written to keep you interested, surely, but not to make it sound like a piece of gossip. C’mon.

Also, press releases don’t announce agreements — they announce announcements. I know it’s hard to understand that, but the correct verbiage would have been “Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage of entertainment company Fake Empire and The CW have announced today the end the long-running ‘Gossip Girl’ series after the conclusion of its current season” or something to that effect.

Secondly, why would the press release writer spend time talking about Netflix as a company in the middle of the news it’s trying to delineate? It’s distracting. More so, unnecessary. Even when Time Warner announced The CW-Netflix partnership, it didn’t put that information up top. It relegated it to the bottom in an “About Netflix” subsection.

Get atta here!

4. Everything else.

There should be more than just one media contact for something like this. For example, Netflix. Perhaps, for example, The CW — which would be announcing a series finale also. There’s nothing about CW President Mark Pedowitz…who I’m guessing would have something to say in this kind of news. A series that’s ending would not wait until Fall for the box set for multiple reasons. One of those reasons being that box sets usually take so long to be released because the home entertainment people like to ride the promotion of the current upcoming season so that they don’t have to spend much money; that’s why box sets of final seasons are usually released a couple of weeks after the finale airs. Isn’t One Tree Hill‘s final season already out? Since when is something “movie-like” also “intimate”? And so on…

Perhaps this is a real press release, but the above issues were too glaring to me when I first read it.

Believe what you will, Gossip Girlers.