Doubling Down on Awesome: ‘Rated Awesome’ is NNN’s Latest Parody Series

Even the folks at Next New Networks were surprised just how big a hit they had on their hands just 9 months after launching their pop music parody web series The Key of Awesome. The show has now grossed over 150 million views since launching last October, with over 30 Million in just the past month.

Who knew topical pop culture references with heavy teen influences would do well on YouTube?

NNN’s do-it-yourself movie network Indy Mogul decided to get into the game with a new movie parody series Rated Awesome which launched today with an send up trailer of Blade vs. Twilight dubbed “Twilight Breaking Dawn.” The concept: “What if Edward, Jacob, Bella and the rest of “Twilight” nerds had to go up against Blade the most bad ass vampire hunter?”

To be sure, the re-cut/re-imagined movie trailer game is much more saturated online and particularly on YouTube. For over five years How It Should Have Ended, which was eventually picked up by Starz Digital, has been animating alternate parody endings to blockbusters like Twilight, Transformers and Avatar. And plently of YouTube regulars count on spoofing the blockbusters for the bulk of their views.

Indy Mogul’s Erik Beck and Mark Douglas, the same two behind Key of Awesome, are the creative force behind this new series, along with NNN’s Ben Relles. And given their track record on the music side, I wouldn’t bet against this one doing well. Though an argument could be made that the replay value of the catchy and polished music parodies is much greater than that of a fake movie trailer, meaning 30 million views a month might be a little too ambitious.

With Barely Political’s channel tracking at a record 42 million views this month, Ben Relles (who founded Barely Political before it was picked up by NNN) tells us the new series will get some play on that network as well.

Fast turnaround is the name of the game in topical video parody and right now they are on a tight 3-day schedule. “Like The Key of Awesome, these are about 1 day to write, 1 day to shoot, 1 day to edit so we can stay current.” New episodes of Rated Awesome will release every two weeks on Indy Mogul. Some of the future spoofs will include obvious ones like Tron Legacy, and, as Relles tells us, “some older movies that Erik, Mark and I grew up on.” The next movie target? Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network, (aka The Facebook movie.)

Outtakes from Rated Awesome’s first episode: