Quibi Creators Can Edit Their Bite-Sized Content Into Full Feature Films After Two Years
You might have heard aboutQuibi(short for “Quick Bites”), the upcoming streaming subscription service that will only be accessible on mobile devices. Longform shows will be broken up and served to audiences in short chunks, and the service has managed to lure in some top shelf creators likeSteven Spielberg,Antoine Fuqua,Sam Raimi,Steven Soderbergh, andGuillermo del Toro, just to name a few.
But now we have a better understanding of exactlyhowthis nascent service was able to lure such high-end talent. According to a new report, Quibi will be initially licensing content from these creators, but after two years of exclusivity, the service will allow them to re-edit those stories into full features and sell the rights elsewhere, giving them the potential for a huge payoff down the line.
Vanity Fairhas a new article about how Quibi plans to make a splash when it debuts inApril 2020, and it includes some info we hadn’t heard about the new company before:
Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) is making a two-and-a-half-hour drama called#Freerayshawnfor Quibi, aDog Day Afternoon-esque story starringStephen James(If Beale Street Could Talk, Homecoming) as an Iraq War vet who finds himself in a showdown with a New Orleans SWAT team. Fuqua was originally thinking about making it as a movie, but realized that this new service presented him with an intriguing alternative:
“Someone is basically financing a film or a TV show for you on a new platform, and then for the film itself, you get to own the I.P. I can’t think of a better situation. Quibi is basically paying for a film, and then in a few years time, you get to own it. It’s incredible.”
Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of Quibi’s co-founders, is a smart dude – he knew he had to find a way to attract A-list talent to this new platform, and with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple, Disney+, and WarnerMedia looking to fill their own ranks, he had to do something that would make his platform stand out:
Knowing about this two-year-and-then-a-movie dynamic, the question now becomes: will consumers be interested enough in these bite-sized chunks of storytelling that they’ll be willing to pay to watch them through Quibi, or will they just hold off, knowing that if the content is good enough, it will eventually make its way to a theater or a different streaming service altogether?
The service will cost$4.99a month with advertising and$7.99without, and the service will feature three distinct sections of programming:
This is a fascinating experiment, and since Quibi already has at least $1 billion in backing and the support of every major studio, it appears that once it debuts next year, it won’t be disappearing any time soon.
