Five months after stepping down from his position as the Co-CEO of Paramount, Brian Robbins has revealed his next move: He’s getting back into the YouTube world.
The former Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon President, who also co-founded the prominent multi-channel network Awesomeness TV, is behind a new entertainment company called Big Shot Pictures. In a fractured media environment, Big Shot will look to incubate kid-friendly animated IP by leveraging YouTube and harnessing its massive potential as a multiplatform brand builder.
Big Shot has signed a first-look deal with another company that’s eager to get involved with YouTube creators: Sony Pictures Entertainment. The two partners will look to build animated franchises across “film, television, streaming, consumer products, experiences, and emerging digital media formats.” Sony is also backing Big Shot financially, as are Greycroft, MarcyPen Capital Partners, ValueAct Capital, and CAA.
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Creator partnerships, acquisitions, and original IP are all on the table as Big Shot looks to build its digital-native hits. To start, Robbins’ new company has acquired the rights to Eloise at the Plaza, a children’s book series from author Kay Thompson and illustrator Hilary Knight.
Robbins has long understood YouTube’s status as the cutting edge of children’s entertainment. Through Awesomeness TV, he helmed projects that brought social media creators to TV screens and movie theaters.
Awesomeness TV’s ambitious plans never quite lived up to the hype, and the MCN’s namesake streaming service closed its doors in 2017. Robbins argued that YouTube could have done more to promote premium programming. “For guys like us, who are really programming [YouTube] and trying to do more and more premium content, it feels like there needs to be a separate way to discover our content,” he said at Recode’s Code Media conference in 2017, “because it’s really hard to discover content on YouTube.”
Nine years later, YouTube is finally incubating multiplatform, family-friendly stars the way Robbins thought it could. MrBeast is on Amazon Prime, Mark Rober is on Netflix, and Markiplier is in movie theaters. As the well-traveled exec dives back into the digital content waters, he is pledging to use YouTube to its full potential.
“Big Shot believes that scaled audiences on YouTube are crucial to building awareness and fan love that will create tomorrow’s beloved IP,” Robbins said in a statement. “We will build for how kids actually discover and connect today.”
If Big Shot’s gameplan sounds familiar, you may be thinking of the other YouTube-based entertainment company led by a longtime Nickelodeon exec. The cable channel’s former President, Albie Hecht, is now the Chief Content Officer for pocket.watch, which has turned channels like Ryan’s World into multi-pronged businesses that stretch across retail, events, and both digital and traditional platforms.
Robbins has worked with pocket.watch in the past, and he is now putting his spin on the company’s business model. The big boss of Big Shot has more than 30 years of entertainment industry experience on his resume. Now, he plans to use his knowledge to incubate a new generation of loveable characters.
