In June, Lifetime announced its plan to turn Grumpy Cat–the cantankerous feline made famous by a popular image macro–into a movie star. Grumpy Cat (whose actual name is Tardar Sauce) has starred in her own videos before, but her feature film debut will take her acting career to the next level. The trailer for the film is now out, and it has been mostly panned by the YouTube audience.

The film is called Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, and yes, it’s a holiday movie. It stars Tardar Sauce as a disgruntled mall cat who goes on an adventure after serving as the subject of a young girl’s Yuletide wish. Aubrey Plaza voices the titular cat, who seems to be powered by CG throughout the majority of the trailer (unless I missed the part where cats know how to fire paintball guns).

If this sounds to you like Lifetime scraping the bottom of the meme barrel, then you’re in agreement with the majority of the trailer’s viewers. As of this post, the trailer has 4,701 likes against 5,307 dislikes; despite that mixed response (or perhaps because of it), the video has received more than 1.4 million views in just three days.

Will Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever be bad? Yeah, probably. Will it be “so bad, it’s good“? The jury’s still out on that one. No matter where the consensus ultimately falls, one thing’s for sure: The movie will not give the actual Grumpy Cat any reason to ease up on her trademark sneer.

The movie debuts on November 29th at 8 PM EST on Lifetime.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Grumpy Cat, News by Sam Gutelle
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Netflix is looking to bolster its operation overseas, and in order to further that goal, it has hired an experienced digital executive. According to a report by Variety, Larry Tanz, who previously served as the CEO of Vuguru, has joined Netflix as its VP of content acquisition for Europe.

As CEO, Tanz led Vuguru’s efforts to produce both digital content across multiple formats. Initially, it was best known for short-form series like Little Women, Big Cars and Prom Queen. Recently, it expanded its reach to include more long-form content, including several feature films. In the past six months, Vuguru has distributed two films on Hulu: Play Nice, starring Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Feels So Good, a teen comedy.

Before recruiting Tanz, Netflix had already formed a relationship with Tornante, Vuguru’s parent company. The Michael Eisner-owned firm helped create BoJack Horseman, an animated series that debuted on Netflix earlier this year. “Larry has done an incredible job turning Vuguru into a leading independent studio with titles in distribution worldwide,” said Eisner in a statement. “We know Netflix will benefit greatly from Larry’s leadership and expert knowledge of the space and wish him our very best.”

At Netflix, Tanz will try to find content for Netflix’s international content library. The streaming site, which has subscribers in 40 different countries, is interested in expanding its offerings in countries like Germany, France, and the UK. It has already announced some high-profile series in those territories, and with Tanz on board, it looks to expand its roster even further.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Netflix, News, Vuguru/Tornante by Sam Gutelle
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Upon its release in May 2013, the fourth season of Arrested Development was met with mixed reviews. One of the most common criticism related to the show’s jarring narrative format, which jumped around from character to character instead of focusing on the combined misadventures of the Bluth family. In order to appease fans who complained about that format, series creator Mitch Hurwitz is now working on a re-cut version of Arrested Development that tells season four’s story in chronological order.

Hurwitz discussed the new version in an interview with Pretentious Film Majors. While he didn’t offer any other comments about the re-cut version, he discussed the show’s fifth season, which remains a big question mark. Executive producer Brian Grazer began talking with Netflix about Arrested Development‘s future shortly after season four ended, and more recently, Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos claimed he is “positive” there will be a season five.

Hurwitz, on the other hand, sounds a bit less certain. “There’s talk about a fifth season, but it’s not my decision,” he said. “20th Century Fox owns the rights to this thing. But there’s more of a story that has to be told somehow. We’ve got the whole story broken down. Season four was always meant to be act one of a three-act structure, where everything goes sour at the end of it. So that will be hopefully coming.”

Here’s the second-half of Hurwitz’s recent interview, which includes all of the talking points discussed in this article:

We’ll keep our ears peeled for any updates about Arrested Development‘s re-cut season four as well as its as-of-now uncertain future.

Filed under: Arrested Development, Articles, Featured, News by Sam Gutelle
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Michelle Phan’s new music venture with Cutting Edge Group, Shift Music Group, is off to a good start. Phan and Cutting Edge announced their first collaborative deal with the band Late Night Alumni. As part of the effort, Phan is promoting the US house group’s upcoming album by way of incorporating the music into her videos. Check out the very successful YouTube beauty and fashion guru’s November 1, 2014 video “Skeleton Makeup: Watchers of the Night” to see and hear an example.

“Late Night Alumni was an obvious choice as one of the first collaborators,” said Phan in the release. “Their music was featured in my second video ever, and we’ve had a strong relationship since the start of my career. My objective is to leverage my success to help new and existing talent that also support Shift’s vision. By working creatively with artists like Late Night Alumni, we’ll look to increase their fan base and help take them to the next level.”

Late Night Alumni also noted, “We have loved having our music be a part of Michelle’s videos over the years, as well as getting to know her personally. It has always been an organic and fun collaboration and we’re excited to team up with Michelle and Shift Music to release songs from our upcoming album.”

This is the kind of deal Phan and Cutting Edge Group promised when they announced their Shift Music Group initiative in September 2014. Phan can leverage her massive YouTube audience and substantial social media reach to bring new music to the masses. Expect many more partnerships like this in the weeks and months to come. It’s a potentially great way for new musicians to grow their burgeoning fan bases at a very quick rate and affords YouTubers some quality tunes to use in their videos without the fear of being sued.

Filed under: Articles, Channels, News by Bree Brouwer
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Sony Pictures Animation is about to bring a lot of new content to the Frederator network. The studio has teamed up with Fred Seibert‘s multi-channel animation network to fund 12 new short films, one of which will be picked up as a full series.

The 12 shorts will form an incubator program known as GO! Cartoons, and Frederator is now accepting pitches for the project. The 12 winners will begin to roll out on Frederator’s Cartoon Hangover channel beginning in fall 2015, with a new short arriving each month. At the end of that one-year period, the short Frederator and Sony choose to green-light will earn an extended stay on Cartoon Hangover.

This is not the first time Frederator has used an incubator project to source new material. Several of the studio’s most notable TV projects–including The Powerpuff Girls, The Fairly OddParents, and Adventure Time–were born out of incubators. So too was Bee and PuppyCat, the animated YouTube series that is set to debut its first season after completing a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign.

“Fred Seibert is a force of nature in animation, and we are thrilled to expand our current relationship with him by partnering on this,” said Bob Osher, President of Sony Pictures Digital Productions, in a release. “This is a great opportunity for Sony Pictures Animation to find new talent that might not emerge from more traditional platforms. Fred has a proven track record with this type of incubator project.”

We still have to wait a year until we can see any results from GO! Cartoons, but in the meantime, if you have an idea to submit, you can pitch it right here.

Filed under: Articles, Channel Frederator, Featured, News, Web Series by Sam Gutelle
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DisneyCollectorBR is in first place on the U.S. charts for its sixth week in a row. The online video destination for your favorite videos of adults playing with children’s toys took an 8% hit in views, but still managed to rack up more than 86.5 million views on the week. Marvel is up next in the #2 spot. The YouTube outpost of the classic comic book imprint scored more than 53.6 million views in the last seven days.

Rihanna is next up in third place. The international pop star had a strong 117% uptick to end the week with nearly 48.6 million views. In the #4 spot is Blucollection. One of the other most-viewed YouTube channels featuring videos of adults playing with children’s toys attracted nearly 44.6 million views on the week.

And rounding out the Top 5 once again is Enrique Iglesias. The pop star hasn’t released a significant online video in several weeks, but still managed to rack up nearly 41.6 million views.

Top Gainers

The honor of one of our Top Gainers in the U.S. this week goes to Jimmy Kimmel Live.

ABC’s YouTube outpost for its late night talk show saw a sizable increase in its weekly view count thanks to a pair of live performances from Taylor Swift. The country-turned-pop star sang “Out of the Woods” and “Shake It Off” to promote her 1989 album for Kimmel and co. and audiences at home. The videos quickly racked up a collective several million views to help Kimmel’s YouTube channel score a 158% week-over-week increase in views, nearly 40.5 million views in total, and the #7 spot on the U.S. charts.

Channel Distribution

The top 50 most viewed U.S. YouTube channels this week amassed a total of 1,380,419,095 views. Here’s the distribution of those channels by multi-channel network:

• VEVO: 20 channels in the U.S. Top 50, with Rihanna topping out at #3.
• BuzzFeed, Disney, Fullscreen, Maker Studios, Movieclips, WMG: 2 channels each the Top 50, with BuzzFeed’s BuzzFeed Video at #8, Disney’s Marvel at #2, Fullscreen’s PopularMMO at #11, Maker’s markiplierGAME at #20, Movieclips’ MovieclipsTrailers at #12, and WMG’s Jason Derulo at #35.

As always, keep up to speed with the latest Tubefilter Charts and all of our news at Tubefilter by subscribing to our newsletter, following us on Twitter, becoming a fan on Facebook, and watching our videos on YouTube.

OpenSlate is a video content analytics platform that tracks more than 250,000 YouTube video channels and measures their ability to attract, engage and influence an audience. By providing one consistent measure of quality – the SlateScore™ – OpenSlate helps marketers, producers and agencies hone their online video marketing strategy.

Filed under: Articles, News, Statistics, YouTube, Youtube Chart by Joshua Cohen
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A report published on October 24, 2014 predicted the fashion and beauty-oriented YouTube multi-channel network StyleHaul would close a sale to RTL Group within two weeks. 10 days later, it’s official.

The European entertainment company with some form of ownership stake in over 53 television stations and 29 radio stations in 12 countries around the world that is also responsible for The X Factor, The Price is Right, Family Feud and other hit TV properties through its wholly-owned subsidiary FremantleMedia just purchased a controlling stake in StyleHaul for $107 million. The deal puts the company’s valuation just north of $150 million, with performance incentives that could push the total number to more than $200 million.

StyleHaul CEO Stephanie Horbaczewski announced the deal by way of a post on the StyleHaul blog:

StyleHaul Family –

Today is truly one of the most exciting days in the history of StyleHaul. I am thrilled to announce that we have officially become part of RTL Group – the leading European entertainment network – who has already been a big part of StyleHaul’s success over the past few years. I want to first say a huge THANK YOU to all of you, our creators, for producing the best content there is on YouTube and helping me realize my dreams as you realize your own. This note doesn’t even begin to cover the depth of gratitude and pride I have for each and every one of you for being part of our StyleHaul community – we adore you all!

I want to make sure that you all take comfort in knowing that the relationship that you have with StyleHaul will not change. Our address is the same. Your community manager is the same. You can still find us at the same Twitter and Instagram handles and of course on YouTube, Vine, Tumblr and SnapChat, everywhere you are, we are there too.  We will continue to make you and your content our priority and we are so excited to go through this new journey with all of you, together, as a family.

I also want to sincerely thank the global staff of StyleHaul. Your energy, passion, creativity and dedication to StyleHaul keeps me motivated and inspired, every single day. Thank you for being committed to our success.

Can’t stop dancing and singing!

Love your biggest fan,
Stephanie
@StyleHaulSteph @StyleHaul
XoXo

And here’s what StyleHaul had to tweet about the news:

We’re ecstatic to announce that @StyleHaul has been acquired by @RTLGroup! http://t.co/HoqZFpyHN8 @StyleHaulSteph pic.twitter.com/fAmr487YxZ

— StyleHaul (@StyleHaul) November 3, 2014

RTL’s contribution to StyleHaul’s success that Horbaczewski mentions above has included a $6 million funding round closed back in May 2013. RTL’s parent company, the German multinational mass media company Bertelsmann led a previous $6.5 million in February 2013. And those two checks are on top of SyleHaul’s initial $4.4 million funding from 2012 that included individual investors Allen and Aaron DeBevoise and instinations Juvo Capital and RezVen Partners. All in, the YouTube MCN has raised roughly $16.6 million since its start in 2011.

But RTL’s support of StyleHaul hasn’t only come in the form of cash. The MCN inked a multi-year, multi-series development deal with RTL’s FremantleMedia back in December 2013 to produce original programming (e.g. The Crew). The production house will also undoubtedly be a great outlet if any of the programming created in StyleHaul’s new branded studios division or by the company’s relatively new Chief Content Officer, Mia Godlwyn looks like it could make the jump from the web to TV.

“Stephanie and her team are among the best in the business at executing branded and premium content programmes, across multiple platforms, with video being at the core,” said RTL Group CEO, Guillaume de Posch to The Hollywood Reporter. “Additionally, StyleHaul already works closely with RTL Group’s content production arm, FremantleMedia, and we look forward to growing that relationship. StyleHaul, together with their portfolio of content creators and best-in-class video content, will enhance RTL Group’s presence in online video.”

StyleHaul currently boasts more than 5,000 YouTube channels with an aggregate more than 203 million subscribers and is the YouTube network of record for superstars like Zoe Sugg and iJustine. It’s also the latest in a line of high profile, multi-million dollar MCN deals. Disney acquired Maker Studios for $500 to $950 million in March 2014 and The Chernin Group‘s and AT&T‘s Otter Media picked up a controlling stake in Fullscreen for somewhere between $200 to $300 million in September 2014.

Filed under: Articles, News, Studios, StyleHaul, YouTube by Joshua Cohen
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