At CNE, Galloway’s official job title will be executive producer of programming for digital video. In that role, he’ll be tasked with overseeing the production of content across multiple brands and platforms. CNE’s owned-and-operated publications, including GQ, Glamour, and Vanity Fair, share videos on the company’s proprietary video platform The Scene while also utilizing YouTube, Facebook, and Snapchat. Vogue, for example, is one of the brands with a spot in Snapchat’s coveted Discover section.
Galloway will report to CNE SVP of programming Croi McNamara. “Anthony is an Emmy-winning producer with extensive experience creating engaging content for all platforms,” said McNamara in a statement. “His creative vision and deep understanding of how to program to next generation audiences will be invaluable to CNÉ as we continue to innovate and push the boundaries of our storytelling.”
Galloway’s experience at Vice will be very relevant at CNE, given the many similarities between the two companies. Both started in the print world before launching expansive digital networks that span multiple, category-specific verticals. Given Vice’s tendency to break rules, CNE’s decision to hire Galloway could be a sign that the World Trade Center-based media company is ready to push the envelope more than it already has.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, News by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on Conde Nast Entertainment Hires New Content Executive Away From Vice Media
Dante Basco, the actor who played Rufio in Steven Spielberg’s Peter Pan sequel Hook, is Kickstarting a fan-fic film that tells the backstory of his character, who serves as the leader of The Lost Boys. In addition to Basco, the writer/director Jonah Feingold — who collaborated with Nash Grier on a YouTube series titled Confessions Of A Teenage Cupid last year — is set to helm the project, which is called Bangarang.
The short film will follow 13-year-old Roofus, according to its Kickstarter page, with a pre-Neverland story that has been reverse-engineered from Hook — including how Rufio became the leader of the Lost Boys, where ‘bangarang’ (a battle cry of sorts) comes from, and how he got his famed mohawk.
“The Peter Pan mythology, specifically Hook, is the reason I became a film director,” Feingold tells Tubefilter. “This is a passion project that I think holds a unique place in the prequel world, as it’s certainly a big commentary on our social and political climate.” Launched on Kickstarter on Monday, Bangarang has already raised $24,000 of its $30,000 goal — with 30 days of the campaign remaining. However, the team — which also includes executive producer (and Maker Studios co-founder) Rawn Ericson III — says that if they raise $200,000, they will create a feature-length version of Bangarang.
In addition to raising funds, the team is also hoping to find potential cast members via the Kickstarter venture, and is inviting interested Los Angeles-based actors to email headshots and audition clips to bangarangthefilm@gmail.com. The project will ultimately be distributed for free on Basco’s YouTube channel, and is set to premiere in April.
Check out the pitch video for Bangarang below:
Filed under: Kickstarter by Geoff Weiss Comments Off on ‘Hook’ Star Dante Basco (AKA ‘Rufio’) Is Kickstarting A Prequel To Premiere On YouTube
The app that lets you swipe through prospective partners is Wheeling and dealing. Tinder has announced an acquisition of Wheel, a video startup whose primary offering resembles Snapchat’s Stories.
Wheel has been working on a mobile-friendly video product since its 2015 inception. The most intriguing detail about the startup is the list of its investors, which according to Variety includes a pair of notable online video venture capitalists: Maker Studios backer Mark Suster and Machinima founder Allen Debevoise.
With its new toy, Tinder could give its single-and-ready-to-mingle users a new way to connect with each other. “We are always exploring new ways to innovate while helping our users make connections on Tinder,” said Tinder head of product and revenue Brian Norgard. “I’m excited Paul [Boukadakis, the CEO of Wheel] is joining our product team to drive special initiatives that leverage his experience connecting people around innovative content.”
Video integration has always seemed like a logical step for dating apps, but Tinder could be the first major player in its industry to move in that direction. YouTube started as a dating service before pivoting to its current function, but that was 12 years ago, and the online dating landscape has evolved enough that prospective partners might be interested in swapping videos with each other before meeting up IRL.
Financial details of Tinder’s Wheel acquisition were not disclosed.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, News by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on Dating App Tinder Seeks Video With Latest Acquisition
YouTube creator Caspar Lee, who counts 9 million subscribers between his two channels, is set to serve as the digital host of this year’s Brit Awards. At the same time, YouTube — which has served as the Brits’ global livestreaming partner for the past three years — will once again host a live stream of the storied music awards show.
Lee, 22, will cover all the red carpet and backstage action, with celebrity interviews and additional content created exclusively for the Brits’ various social channels. This year, Brits performers are slated to include Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry, Bruno Mars, and more. Lee will have big shoes to fill, as last year’s digital hosting duties fell to fellow London-based creators Dan Howell and Phil Lester.
“British music, fashion, and culture are the envy of the world — and The Brit Awards always remind us why,” YouTube’s global head of music, Lyor Cohen, said in a statement. “We’re making sure fans around the world get all the action live on YouTube — and there’s an embarrassment of riches to enjoy…We’ve partnered with the Brits long enough to know this is must-see stuff.”
Added Brit Awards CEO Geoff Taylor: “It’s really exciting for us that so many people around the world will get the chance to celebrate the UK’s biggest night in music live as it happens.”
In addition to the high-profile hosting gig, Lee has pursued various endeavors outside of YouTube to much acclaim in recent years, including releasing his own biography — co-penned by his mother — as well as headlining feature films alongside fellow creators Olajide ‘KSI’ Olatunjiand Joe Sugg.
Filed under: YouTube by Geoff Weiss Comments Off on Caspar Lee To Serve As Digital Host Of Next Wednesday’s Brit Awards
Insights is a new weekly series featuring entertainment industry veteran David Bloom. It represents an experiment of sorts in digital-age journalism and audience engagement with a focus on the intersection of entertainment and technology, an area that David has written about and thought about and been part of in various career incarnations for much of the past 25 years. David welcomes your thoughts, perspectives, calumnies, and kudos at david@tubefilter.com, or on Twitter @DavidBloom.
This installment of Insights is brought to you by Beachfront RISE.
In this crazy week in media and tech, Wired magazine’s cover story featured the New York Times telling my long-ago colleague that it wants to be the next Netflix, selling high-quality subscription content for everything from cooking to exercise to video documentaries to, oh yeah, journalism.
Also this week, the New York Post says Amazon wants to be the next HBO, with plans to launch a stand-alone subscription-video network as part of its plan to become “a global news and media company.”
Amazon’s content ambitions have been further emboldened after two of last year’s many acquisitions – Manchester By the Sea and The Salesman – received a total of six Oscar nominations, including Manchester’s Best Picture nom, a first for a streaming service.
Netflix and the Times, by the way, also picked up three Oscar nominations between them, for the documentary shorts Extremis, White Helmets, and 4.1 Miles.
And there are certainly other companies aspiring to build a Netflix-like content cornucopia of subscription revenue.
To be sure, there are lots of reasons to want to be the next HBO. Time Warner reported last week that HBO revenue jumped 5% last year, to nearly $6 billion, and subscribers to its over-the-top apps have tripled since 2015, to 2.4 million.
And Netflix is rocking along after a record quarter where it added 7 million subscribers. That helped push share prices to nearly double levels of a year ago. Among the company’s admirable metrics, it’s worth noting that Netflix plans to spend $6 billion this year on original programming, which is to say slightly more money than HBO made last year. Go big or go home.
But also, as everyone was talking about Being Like Netflix, did anyone notice what happened at Apple this week? The company’s share prices shot to an all-time high on Monday, valuing the company at $700 billion. The world’s second-most-valuable company is Alphabet, the Google parent. And Alphabet’s valuation lags $120 billion behind Apple.
Admittedly, the renewed fervor for Apple stock comes from several, mostly non-entertainment factors, almost all of them surrounding the fact that Apple is again selling countless boatloads of iPhones (half its revenue, three fourths of operating income), especially in big markets such as China. Legendary investor Warren Buffett also quadrupled his Apple holdings when they were down during a recent lull, an important signal to the rest of the market.
So, with anticipation that this year’s 10th anniversary model of the iPhone will be Truly Special, investors got a little heated up. But tucked away in Apple’s latest public pronouncements were some bits suggesting the hardware company is getting a little more Netflix-y too, in its own gargantuan way.
“Four years from now, I don’t know where we’re going to be in relation to this,” said Cue. “We’re trying different things. How fast it grows or where it goes remains to be seen.”
And then Cue talked small on video-content spending: “We’re not out trying to buy a bunch of shows. We’re trying things that are creative, that move culture, that Apple is adding some value to. We’ll see.”
But make no mistake. Apple is already a giant in the subscription-content business. For instance, did you catch the Grammys last Sunday? Chance the Rapper won three, including Best New Artist. Not bad for “a touring artist” who only released his winning album as a digital stream, initially only on Apple Music. Talk about content that moves culture.
All told, Apple’s subscription services and content generated $24.4 billion in revenue last year, including more than $7 billion in the last quarter. Last month, CEO Tim Cook told investors the company hopes to double that number by 2021. That would make for a very big subscription business indeed.
As it is, Apple’s subscription services unit is already nearly the combined size of Viacom (2016 revenues of about $12 billion) and CBS (about $14 billion). Netflix has a market capitalization of $61 billion, pretty good for a company with few physical assets and a relatively new library of original programming, though that’s less than one-tenth of Apple’s overall valuation.
Apple’s sheer size and existing market power with the iTunes Store has no doubt complicated those on-again, off-again talks the company keeps having for some sort of cable-style bundle of programming, which again seem to have gone nowhere, according to recent reports.
And yes, Apple must figure out what comes after iPhones, as phones evolve into whatever is next. Cupertino has to keep growing its subscription business, has to keep exploring autonomous vehicles and augmented reality and the Internet of Things, and has to keep selling lots of phones, computers, watches, streaming devices and more.
So when companies talk about being the next Netflix, I say, fair enough. But maybe that’s not enough. Maybe you should think different.
This installment of Insights is brought to you by Beachfront RISE, the premier app building company that houses all of your content in one place for any device, and monetizes it automatically with their built in programmatic video advertising platform.
The Big Script is a collaboration between CNE, Hutcherson’s Turkeyfoot Productions, and Indigenous Media, a studio founded in 2014 by a trio of entertainment industry vets. The project’s producers combed through thousands of screenplays from Hollywood’s Black List before settling on five to adapt into short films. The resulting videos range from 11 to 17 minutes in length, and four of them are directed by their writers. The lone exception is ‘Ape,’ which Hutcherson directed from a screenplay written by Jon Johnstone.
With The Big Script, CNE, Indigenous, and Turkeyfoot are hoping to introduce viewers to the “next generation of great storytellers,” as a trailer for the project informs us. All of the featured filmmakers are relatively young, and the stories they have shared on the screen all have teens or twentysomethings in their leading roles. “We recognize that there is a lack of millennial voices and formats in Hollywood,” said CNE president Dawn Ostroff.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, News by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on Short Film Collection ‘The Big Script,’ Led By Josh Hutcherson, Now Available Through Conde Nast
The PewDiePie controversy, which rocked the YouTube community this week, has brought into sharp focus the potential risks that big brands take when going into business with digital stars — creators who share their unvarnished lives with audiences on a daily basis, and who are prone to making off-color comments that may cross some lines.
The latest creator to illustrate this plight is 17-year-old James Charles, who made history after being tapped as CoverGirl’s first male spokesmodel last October. Yesterday, as Charles was getting ready for a school trip to Africa, he quoted, in a now-deleted tweet, a conversation between himself and a friend: “‘I can’t believe we’re going to Africa today OMG what if we get Ebola.’ ‘James, we’re fine, we could’ve gotten it at Chipotle last year’…”
Some fans found the joke tone-deaf and threatened to boycott Cover Girl, New York magazine reports. Initially, Charles defended the tweet and blocked followers who were calling him out for making comments that they deemed stereotypical and degrading.
Later, however, Charles removed the tweet and apologized. “I was told what to say and that’s not how an apology should work,” Charles explained, perhaps alluding to a distressed PR team at the storied makeup company. “I understand why what I said was offensive and ignorant. I look forward to exploring the country, and learning much more about the people and culture, because clearly I know very little and have a lot to learn.”
While Maker Studios dropped PewDiePie for his anti-Semitic jokes, and YouTube axed the second season of his Red series Scare PewDiePie, Cover Girl looks to be standing by Charles. “James Charles’ tweet does not represent CoverGirl’s perspective,” the company told New York in a statement “We agree his statements were inappropriate but appreciate that he has issued an apology. We are an inclusive brand and respect all people and cultures.”
Filed under: News by Geoff Weiss Comments Off on Influencer And CoverGirl Spokesman James Charles Apologizes For “Offensive” Africa Joke
If you’re reading this article, you’ve surely heard that Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg, a YouTube megastar who currently has more than 53 million subscribers on his channel, has been dropped from his deal with Maker Studios, the Disney-owned network with which he was previously partnered. Maker’s decision to drop Kjellberg was informed by a spate of videos, uncovered by the Wall Street Journal, in which the Swedish gamer employs Nazi imagery and anti-Semitic remarks. For the execs at the Mouse House, doing business with an offensive personality goes against the family-friendly mission at its core. And so, since Kjellberg’s actions had been deemed inappropriate enough to clash with that image, he is now without a partner network.
That decision raises a few questions. Chief among them, had Disney execs ever watched a PewDiePie video before this point? Had they realized his channel is built on humor designed to be offensive to some? Do they know his boundary-breaking nature is a huge part of his appeal?
Given that Disney paid $675 million to acquire Maker, one would have to figure its execs were at least familiar with Kjellberg’s edgy exploits when they decided to pull the trigger on such a big deal. By cutting ties with the outspoken YouTuber, Disney has reminded me of one of the big fallacies that pops up all the time in online video discussions: Though Disney’s audience and PewDiePie’s may be around the same average age, they are starkly different, and that divide isn’t just coincidental; it’s the whole reason people like Kjellberg became so popular in the first place.
Shock and Awe
In 2001, I was 11, and my favorite website was Joe Cartoon, a repository of crude flash cartoons created by Joseph Shields. Joe Cartoon existed solely to push boundaries as far as they would go. In its videos, foul-mouthed gerbils, frogs, and humans met grisly fates, whether by getting pulsed in a microwave or chopped up in a blender. One of the site’s most infamous sketches, Donkey Bong, re-wrote the lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” to describe life inside a donkey’s rectum. By any measure, Joe Cartoon produced some of the grossest, most vile, and least appropriate web content around.
And my friends and I loved it. Joe Cartoon was a complete departure from the TV shows peddled to our age group, and I clicked around the site (while my parents weren’t around, of course) because I was curious to see how many ways Shields could break the rules. Before the Internet, we would have never discovered anything quite like that, but an emerging medium allowed us to find something so wildly different. It was exciting and refreshing, regardless of its artistic merit. Amazingly, it is also still updated sporadically.
Viewer Discretion Is Advised
The tweens of 2001 poked around on sites like Joe Cartoon, but 15 years later, the same age group is at home on YouTube. The abundance of Generation Z viewers on the Internet is no secret, with some companies, likeAwesomenessTV, building entire networks around their ability to reach that cohort. Some Gen Z viewers prefer offerings that are in line with the shows available on, say, the Disney Channel, but others are looking for something a little more intense. They know there is edgier content available on the Internet, and they want to find it.
That’s where Kjellberg comes in. He has succeeded for a lot of reasons, such as his consistent posting schedule and his affinity for YouTube’s algorithm, but his ability to be different on a platform where being different is rewarded has played a huge role in his explosive popularity.
And what’s one of the easiest ways to be different? Be vulgar. Profanity is absent from TV shows aimed at young audiences, so what better way to shock and excite those viewers than by cursing, making explicit references to private body parts, and playing games that are certainly not appropriate for all ages? In his most popular video, a 2013 montage that has received more than 76 million things, Kjellberg does all three of those things.
Where Is The Line?
It shouldn’t be a surprising to say, “Kjellberg succeeds in part because his videos shock and excite young viewers,” since that was true in 2013 and is still true today. What’s surprising is that major brands have tried to pretend that’s not the case. Disney bought Maker Studios because it wanted a piece of the young, digital-native audience, even if many of those viewers went online because they wanted something different and edgier than the content they had previously been fed. Kjellberg spent almost three years as the most prominent partner of the network owned by Disney, and it was only once questions of intolerance came up that Disney decided the fit wasn’t right.
My goal is not to stand squarely in the “free PewDiePie” camp, since there is a difference between blending or microwaving cartooned humans to death, cursing through M-rated games, and cracking insensitive jokes about a specific ethnic group (though for what it’s worth, as a Jew, I was not offended). As Kjellberg said in a recent video, he is a “rookie comedian” who sometimes goes too far. It is possible, however, to both accuse Kjellberg of crossing a line while also accepting his content is designed to cross lines.
Pushing the boundaries of taste isn’t just a PewDiePie thing; it can be found all over YouTube. Another one of Maker’s most notable partner channels is Epic Rap Battles of History, which pits famous figures against one another in witty (and often profane) verbal wars. How did ERB first become “YouTube famous”? With an episode that is 50% Nazi jokes. As much as Nice Peter and EpicLloyd’s clever lyrics are the force that drives ERB, the show’s shock value cannot be overlooked. It’s a big part of what has made ERB into such a big hit, but Disney hasn’t decided that Peter and Lloyd have crossed a line, nor should it.
The Profane Paradigm
When the YouTubes and Maker Studios of the world give ad sales presentations, they stress that brands need to work with digital-native creators in order to most effectively reach Generation Z viewers. That audience watches more online video and less TV, these presenters say, and advertisers would be wise to take note.
What you won’t hear in those presentations, however, is an admission that many of those hard-to-reach consumers have moved to the Internet so they can find more raw content that hasn’t been scrubbed and made age-appropriate in the same way as the stuff they find on TV. The revenue PewDiePie generates is highlighted, while his tendency to be purposefully brand-unfriendly (with swearing and vulgarity) as he makes that money is diminished.
If Disney wants, it can reshape the Maker network to only include creators whose values align with its own, but in doing so, it would lose its connection to the spirit of YouTube. The democratization of content allows fresh, new voices to gain a platform they would otherwise lack, but it also lets viewers choose to champion offensive videos, if that’s what they want to see.
Kjellberg is going to keep making videos, and some of them are going to be offensive, and people should never be surprised by this again. If you don’t dig his style, you’re under no obligation to watch him (unless, like me, you’re paid to write about his videos), but you should at least accept that he and his fellows are not automatically age-appropriate just because their fans happen to be of a certain age. When content is designed to push boundaries, it is sometimes going to go too far. Kjellberg isn’t the first creator to be at odds with the values of his partner network and the YouTube platform itself, and he won’t be the last.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, News, PewDiePie by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on PewDiePie Is Offensive. That’s The Point.
Beginning in 2018, YouTube will no longer show users unskippable, 30-second ads.
“We’re committed to providing a better ads experience for users online,” a Google spokesperson told The Drum. “As part of that, we’ve decided to stop supporting 30-second unskippable ads as of 2018 and focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers.”
That said, YouTube will still offer 20-second unskippable ads and 6-second unskippable Bumper ads — a format it unveiled last April. At the time, YouTube said Bumper ads were ideally suited to the kinds of “snackable videos” succeeding across mobile devices today, noting, “We like to think of Bumper ads as little haikus of video ads.”
As attention spans around digital video consumption continue to plummet, the fact that YouTube is abandoning 30-second ads means that marketers will no longer simply be able to re-purpose television commercials for online use, reports The Drum.
Eva Tuckman, the PPC director at digital ad agency Roast, told The Drum that she also sees the move away from 30-second ads as an attempt by YouTube to keep viewers engaged as video consumption on Facebook — which is testing mid-roll ads that appear 20 seconds after videos have launched — continues to explode.
Filed under: advertising, YouTube by Geoff Weiss Comments Off on In 2018, YouTube Will Stop Showing 30-Second Unskippable Ads
Did you know that influencer marketing content delivers an ROI eleven times higher than traditional digital marketing tactics? It’s no wonder that 71% of marketers believe the most effective form of advertising is ongoing ambassadorships. Like all marketing tactics, influencer campaigns can only be successful if brands take specific factors into consideration and then execute effectively. One key component is identifying true brand advocates.
Pete Czerwinski is a competitive eater and the creator of the popular YouTube channel, Furious Pete. His channel started to garner attention in 2007 after he began to post videos of himself attempting (and crushing) seemingly impossible eating contests and challenges. Fast forward ten years to today, Pete has multiple Guinness World Records in eating, is a highly regarded fitness coach, and has grown his audience to almost four million subscribers on YouTube alone. In Pete’s own words, “I like to work-out, but the thing that really gets peoples’ attention and views is whenever I do crazy eating challenges.”
With a vast portfolio of sponsored content from Old Spice to Wounded Warrior, it’s obvious Pete knows a thing or two about successfully working with brands. We sat down with him to get his angle on what it takes to be an effective brand ambassador, and how ongoing relationships between brands and influencers can be managed and sustained in ways that benefit both parties.
One brand experience that Pete reminisces about is working with Old Spice to film him completing a Tough Mudder endurance challenge. The video shows him crushing each of the course’s obstacles, from crawling under barbed wire to running through a muddy ditch. Not only did he enjoy filming the video, but as he notes, “It just worked really well with my brand,” which is an important factor to consider when choosing who he wants to work with.
Even before influencers start working with brands, Pete argues that you must know your brand and your audience. Who are the people watching your content and what content do they enjoy? For Pete, he knows that his audience is “a younger generation, mostly males, focusing on fitness and food.” Pete is a sponsored athlete who frequently posts about his workouts, so filming a Tough Mudder was nothing out of the ordinary for his audience to see on his channels.
Pete mentions that he greatly appreciated the fact that Old Spice gave him full creative control of the content. As he was crushing each obstacle, he was given the ability to direct each scene to his liking. “You have to make sure that you do get final creative control,” he says, “That is the number one thing.” No matter how big your audience is, they are loyal to you because of your content and work and that means possibly putting your foot down when talking to brands.
At the end of the day having that control “is going to benefit the brand in the long run because if you don’t make the content the way you would normally make the content [the brand’s] not going to get any traffic direction.” Your audience knows when brands greatly influence the direction and not only will they call you out on it, they won’t click on any branded links and the performance of the campaign will suffer.
So, take it from someone who is well versed in creating successful branded content, knowing your audience and creating content for them is vital. Make sure you are working with brands that you are passionate about, that not only fit your personal brand, but also give you the creative freedom to integrate their brand seamlessly.
Brad Davis serves as the Director of Digital Campaigns at Branded Entertainment Network (BEN), a Bill Gates Company. A valuable member of Plaid Social Labs, which was acquired by Branded Entertainment Network in May of 2015 to expand reach into the digital influencer community, he has a portfolio of hundreds of social media influencer campaigns that have reached over 1B individuals across YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Brad has been a key player in the influencer space working with thousands of content creators to produce excellent branded content for leading brands. Brad currently resides in Provo, UT.
Cameron Partridge serves as the Director of Digital Business Development at Branded Entertainment Network (BEN) where he oversees the development of new brand and influencer relationships. With over seven years of digital media and marketing experience, Cameron has helped companies strategically grow, engage, and maintain their audiences across a variety of platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and CRM databases. He has worked with multiple global brands such as Ubisoft, Visit Las Vegas, Boeing, Orabrush, AT&T and Western Digital.
The streaming giant, which has renewed every single one of its original offerings for at least two seasons, is set to premiere the second season of its talk show foray, Chelsea, beginning on April 14. But whereas the first season of Chelsea, starring comedian and host Chelsea Handler, featured three half-hour episodes hitting Netflix every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the second season will feature one-hour weekly installments, premiering every Friday night.
Chelsea’s second season will comprise 30 episodes — the same amount as the first season, Variety reports. Check out Handler’s quirky announcement video below:
Netflix initially announced that it had renewed Chelsea back in July — despite the fact that, by some accounts, it had gotten off to a shaky start, with no interviews breaking into the cultural zeitgeist and showrunner Bill Wolff departing a mere three weeks after the show’s premiere.
The streaming giant, has, however, placed a stated emphasis on comic programming in recent weeks, and has acquired standup specials from Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Amy Schumer, and Sarah Silverman.
Filed under: News by Geoff Weiss Comments Off on Netflix’s ‘Chelsea’ Will Transition To One-Hour Weekly Episodes For Second Season
YouTube creator Hannah Hart has entered a first-look deal with global entertainment goliath Lionsgate, in which Hart, 30, will star in and executive produce feature films. The first project in development, Lionsgate announced today, is a still-untitled LGBTQ romantic comedy.
Lionsgate signed a similar overall deal with Hart’s friend and frequent collaborator Grace Helbig in October for both movie and TV projects. Last year, Lionsgate also acquired Dirty 30, a feature film starring Hart, Helbig, and Mamrie Hart — a comedy trio known as YouTube’s ‘Holy Trinity’. Lionsgate also made a $25 million annual commitment to films and series led by influencers in coming years, with projects to be released via on-demand platforms.
“I’m extremely pleased to be partnering with [Lionsgate] as I continue my journey into film,” Hart said in a statement. “My hope in working together is to bring more inclusivity and diversity into storytelling overall.”
Added Jordan Gilbert, Lionsgate’s VP of digital production: “Having worked with Hannah on several successful projects, we know that her distinctive worldview, comedic timing and dedication to fresh content is what makes her an impressive writer, producer, and star.”
Hart, who counts 5 million followers across all of her social platforms, rose to fame thanks to her YouTube cooking series, My Drunk Kitchen. She has also released two New York Times Best Selling books and has a Food Network series in the works, in which she will travel across the country in search of budget restaurants. Hart is represented by UTA, attorney Ryan Pastorek, and managed by Linnea Toney.
Filed under: Hannah Hart, Lionsgate by Geoff Weiss Comments Off on Hannah Hart Signs First-Look Deal With Lionsgate, Will Star In LGBTQ Feature Film
