American YouTube fans may not have heard of the Brazilian YouTube channel Porta dos Fundos, but that hasn’t stopped the five-member comedy group from amassing over 10.2 million subscribers and more than 1.7 billion total video views. And all that success on Google’s online video platform has now translated into some impressive deals with traditional media companies.
Porta dos Fundos (translated as Back Door) has landed a TV series deal with Fox’s local Brazilian pay-TV channel Canal Fox for a show called O Grande Gonzalez (The Great Gonzalez). The YouTube comedy group also inked a feature film deal with Brazilian film distribution company Downtown for Porta dos Fundos — contrato vitalicio (Porta dos Fundos — Lifetime Contract).
Porta dos Fundos consists of members Antonio Tabet, Gregorio Duvivier, Ian Fernandes (aka Ian SBF), Joao Vicente de Castro, and Fabio Porchat. The quintet quit their day jobs at Brazilian broadcasting company TV Globo and started uploading sketches to their YouTube channel in 2012. Now, the troupe boasts over 400 skits on their channel, many of them subtitled in both Spanish and English and providing comedic takes on topics like Fifty Shades of Grey, corporations, and even the Ku Klux Klan.
“We decided to give up our contracts with Globo to pursue a different type of humor — to do it our way,” Porchat told Variety.
Drawing comedy inspiration from Monty Python and YouTube channel and content structure from CollegeHumor, Porta dos Fundos started to receive attention from local television companies and networks who wanted the comedy gang to create content for TV. “We received offers from virtually all (free) TV and many pay-TV networks in Brazil,” Tabet said. “We chose Fox, because their offer fulfilled our financial demands and granted us absolute creative freedom.”
The Great Gonzalez will be a ten-episode comic mystery series for Canal Fox. The series is written by Porchat and Gabriel Esteves (a sketch writer for Porta dos Fundos), with Ian SBF leading the project. Production began on The Great Gonzalez in June 2015, but no official premiere date has been set.
Porta dos Fundos’ feature film Lifetime Contract will begin filming sometime in September or October 2015, with no release date determined as of yet. Ian SBF will again helm the project, with a screenplay from Porchat. As for the flick’s content, Porchat noted it “will not be a combination of sketches.” “It is a feature film with a beginning, (middle), and end,” the Porta member clarified.
Porta dos Fundos boasts around 40 full-time employees and new headquarters (complete with a studio) in Rio de Janeiro.
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