Steven If nothing else, Mark Burnett knows public taste. So it should come as no surprise that the producer behind such reality-TV mainstays as Survivor, The Apprentice and Rock Star: Supernova is not looking for a prissy, boutique filmmaker for his new competition-program On the Lot.

Burnett's creative partner and co-producer in the enterprise is Steven Spielberg. And Spielberg didn't get where he is today -- the world's most financially successful filmmaker, with an estimated net worth of billion US, according to Forbes magazine -- by playing to half-full theatres of beatniks with goatees smoking clove cigarettes.

""We vote with our wallets,"" Burnett told CanWest News in an interview in Pasadena, Calif. earlier this year. ""You can't get by in On the Lot simply by being an art-house filmmaker.""

Aspiring filmmakers, including several from Toronto and Vancouver, will gather on the lot at the DreamWorks film studio to film a different project each week, using an established budget and a predetermined cast of actors.

Their work will be judged, Idol-style, by a panel of arbiters: Star Wars actress and Postcards from the Edge author Carrie Fisher; X-Men and Rush Hour sequel king Brett Ratner; Spamalot Broadway producer and Fried Green Tomatoes filmmaker Jon Avnet; and veteran television director and feature filmmaker Garry Marshall, whose career track encompasses everything from The Dick Van Dyke Show and Happy Days to the romantic films Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries.

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