Paolo Coelho crowdsources directors for "The Witch of Portobello" - Hollywood 2.0?

I ran across yet another Paolo Coelho marvel today; a very interesting approach to movie-making that I found via fellow Swiss blogger Bruno Giussani's LunchOverIP blog, here.

Bruno says: "Another is called "The Experimental Witch" and is a film competition/movie crowdsourcing project based on Paulo's novel "The witch of Portobello" [PC:]" I’ve been visiting the pages of readers this last year and I’ve seen excellent works by actresses & actors, musicians, directors, etc. That’s why I thought: why not make a movie together?", he asks. How would that work? The book is divided into 15 narrators' perspectives. Paulo is inviting filmmakers to sign up, pick a narrator, and shoot a video including all the scenes in the book in which that narrator interacts with the main character, Athena..... After the scenes are shot, and the videos uploaded to a private YouTube account, the best ones will be chosen to be edited into the final movie -- all the rights will go to Coelho, while the filmmakers will get 3000 euros each, plus a share of fame if the experiment works out..."  This was in May 2008, so I looked around a bit and Paolo has posted an update, here. The whole thing is sponsored by HP. Related: my previous post on Coelho, a few days ago