Super Bowl LXI

Amazon Ads · Twitch · Concept

The Expert 2:
Extension

Last year, The Expert made the commercial. This year, the audience gets a turn. Up to two hours live on Twitch, with The Expert waiting just off camera.

The first Super Bowl commercial directed by chat…

Directed by Jason Bateman.

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How it works

01

One to two hours, live on Twitch.

A crew is trying to finish a Super Bowl commercial. They are nowhere near ready. We watch them try to pull it together in a live show that plays like a sitcom.

02

Chat makes the calls.

The wardrobe. The props. The mascot. The backdrop. Even the spokesperson and how to finish the line “Now taxes is ______.”

Chat picks from prepared options. Once the votes are in, the crew has forty minutes to make it all work. Every choice makes it into the commercial.

03

Then we shoot it. Once.

One unbroken take, performed live, with everything chat chose. That’s the spot.

Where TurboTax fits

The next chapter for The Expert

Super Bowl LX introduced The Expert. This year, we see what happens when the audience gets his job. He’s still there, just off camera, watching a crew try to make a commercial with thousands of people giving directions.

There’s a reason you hire The Expert

Every vote gives the crew something else to figure out. A new costume. A mascot that barely fits on set. A line nobody knows how to deliver.

The more they take on, the clearer the point becomes: some jobs are easier when you let someone who knows what they’re doing handle them. That’s where TurboTax Full Service comes in.

A sitcom where chat decides what happens next

For one to two hours, viewers follow a commercial shoot that keeps getting further off track. At key moments, chat votes on what happens next, sending the cast and crew down different paths. It’s a chaotic choose-your-own-adventure sitcom, and every choice leaves them with something else to work into the final commercial.

Who’s involved

Jason Bateman is attached to direct if the project sells. We’d propose bringing Adrien Brody back as The Expert, through TurboTax’s existing relationship. His return would make it a direct sequel, but the format can work without him.

Scene One

The crew needs a mascot. They have thirty minutes.

INT. HALLWAY — CONTINUOUS

Moving fast. The camera is the DIRECTOR — we never see him. JANET — TurboTax’s handler from the first spot, now running the floor — is a step ahead and pulling, close to dragging him. The MANAGER hustles behind, eyes down, thumbs going on his phone.

A door at the end of the hall. Janet stops short. Through it: raised voices. Something heavy moving.

Janet

Okay. Little heads up. Our art department is a little underfunded and a little stressed out right now.

(beat)

Just wanted to give you that before we go in.

The camera turns to the MANAGER. He looks up. Thumbs up. Big, confident, meaningless. Straight back down to the phone.

Janet opens the door.

INT. ART DEPARTMENT — CONTINUOUS

Maggie (O.S.)

WHERE IS THE STEAMER.

The room is coming apart. Two people carry a flat past the lens and nearly take somebody's head off. Foam scraps ankle deep. A hot glue gun abandoned and still on, cooking a hole in a table nobody is looking at.

MAGGIE, art director. The eyes of someone who has not sat down since Tuesday.

Janet

This is our wonderful, overworked art director. Maggie — our director.

Maggie

(beat)

So this is him.

Janet

The one and only.

Maggie

Yeah. I don't get it.

(to Janet)

Can I talk to you for a second?

They go three steps and start talking low and fast.

The MANAGER appears in frame. Close. Warm. Phone still in his hand.

Manager

Hey. Hey. Who's my superstar.

(beat)

You are.

A hand on the lens's shoulder. The other hand still typing.

Manager (cont'd)

Don't let this get in your head. Just make the calls. That's why we hired you.

(beat)

Don't forget about my twenty percent.

(already looking back down)

I got you, buddy.

Maggie (O.S.)

MASCOT?!

The camera whips over. Janet and Maggie are mid-argument and clearly have been the entire time.

Maggie (cont'd)

I'm sorry — a mascot. You need a mascot.

Janet

(carefully)

We need a mascot.

Maggie

In thirty minutes.

Janet

In thirty minutes.

Maggie turns in a slow full circle and looks at her entire department. Nobody makes eye contact with her.

Maggie

I could do my taxes in thirty minutes.

(beat)

Thanks to TurboTax.

She winks directly down the lens. She holds it slightly too long.

Maggie (cont'd)

But you want me to make a MASCOT?!

Nobody says anything.

Maggie (cont'd)

(to the room)

Okay. What can we make.

(beat)

In thirty minutes. What exists.

The PA — young, first set, extremely willing — has been hovering this whole time.

PA

A clipboard?

Everyone looks at her.

PA (cont'd)

(gaining confidence she has not earned)

Like a giant one. Six feet. With a tax return on it. And it has a little face.

(beat)

Because of the taxes.

A pause. Maggie actually considers it.

Maggie

That's not the worst —

Tiffany (O.S.)

I have the two-person horse.

Everything stops. Maggie closes her eyes.

Maggie

Tiffany.

Tiffany (O.S.)

It's in the truck. It's been in the truck.

(beat)

I don't know how it fits taxes.

(beat)

But we have it.

A long moment. Somewhere behind them something falls over. Nobody looks.

Maggie

(to the director, dead)

Great.

(beat)

You pick.

The audience decides

What’s the mascot?

Thirty minutes. One of these is achievable. The other one is already in the truck.

Chat decides

Illustrative. Not a live Twitch chat.

Clipboard0
Horse0

It takes effect immediately.

What it costs the night

Scene Two

Twenty minutes later. Whatever you picked is now in the hallway. So is Adrien Brody.

The Spot

One take. Everything the audience picked is still on the floor.