'Kyle Piccolo' Doles Out Some Box Office Therapy

If Dr. Joyce Brothers and The Simpsons’ “Comic Book Guy” had a child together, that child would probably be Kyle Piccolo, from For Your Imagination’s new series Kyle Piccolo: Comic Shop Therapist.

The series, created by Alec Pollak and Neil Turitz, follows Kyle Piccolo (Eric Zuckerman) as he guides his comic-nerd customers through their personal problems using his encyclopedic knowledge of comic books, combined with a fine-tuned understanding of human psychology. The show is filmed at Manhattan’s Midtown Comics, which provides the perfect setting for a series that already has great production value. Executive producer FYI has been one of the most successful productions companies in the online realm with hit shows Break a Leg, DadLabs, and The Patrice O’Neal Show, and they seem to have done it again with their latest project. According to FYI’s blog, Kyle Piccolo has garnered over half a million views through Blip.tv, YouTube, Yahoo, Dailymotion, and iTunes.

Another thing FYI seems to have had success with is getting sponsorships for its shows. The first 5 episodes of Kyle Piccolo were funded by a $36,000 sponsorship from Warner Bros. as a promotional tool for The Dark Knight. Said FYI after The Dark Knight’s opening weekend, “Lost in all of the [Dark Knight] hype was the fact that Kyle Piccolo – Comic Shop Therapist, the blockbuster[*] new web series, is clearly the reason behind the success of the film… Now, did Eddie Murphy’s Meet Dave advertise on Kyle Piccolo? It did not. The result? Less than $10 million at the box office. Hollywood studios, take note. If you want a successful film, call Kyle Piccolo. If he can’t do it, no one can…”

*Editors note: This is the web after all, and we prefer the word “sitebuster.”