THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 43 JULY 31, 2019
KATZENBERG: DAVE PEDLEY/GETTY IMAGES FOR SXSW. FUQUA: NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES.
PUNK’D
: MTV/PHOTOFEST.
NEWS
: HEIDI GUTMAN/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK VIA GETTY IMAGES. SPIELBERG: DAVID LIVINGSTON/GETTY IMAGES.
anthology 50 States of Terror for
Quibi with Sam Raimi and Tony
DiSanto. “Now, traditional film-
makers may be freaked out by the
fact that their movie is going to be
cut up narratively into 10 chapters. I
just think it’s a wonderful challenge
that’s in tune with how consumers
are consuming content.”
Quibi’s biggest draw is
Katzenberg himself. It’s his long
tenure in the business that has
helped him land investments
from NBCUniversal, Disney,
Sony Pictures Entertainment,
WarnerMedia and Viacom. And the
strength of his relationships also
has led to deals with Spielberg, del
Toro, Fuqua and others of their ilk.
Sud says her project for Quibi, the thriller
The Stranger, came out of a conversation with
Katzenberg. “I went in really interested but
also wondering what 10-minute episodes of
television might mean,” she recalls, adding
that she left the meeting feeling like Quibi
“was a completely different way of delivering
content that, in and of itself, would necessi-
tate a different type of storytelling.”
Others who have visited Quibi’s Hollywood
headquarters describe Katzenberg as hands-
on with the programming, regularly dropping
into meetings for all types of projects. “Jeffrey
being front and center and talking directly to
high-end talent makes people feel very com-
fortable about taking a project to Quibi,” says
Frank Jung, co-head of the digital talent and
packaging department at CAA.
Quibi’s deals also are talent-friendly. The
company is licensing content for seven years,
meaning the studio or production company
behind the project retains ownership rights.
And after two years, the rights holder can
repackage those 10-minute chapters into a TV
show or film and take it back into the market.
But while talent likes that, especially in an
age when Netflix and other distributors are
moving to a model of owning everything they
release, several people acknowledge that those
terms are not the primary selling point. After
all, it’s unclear what kind of market there will
be for, say, a movie assembled from a two-
year-old Quibi show.
Quibi also is able to lure the kind of high-
profile talent that has long ignored the
shortform space because of its up-front
investment in programming. The com-
pany is offering cost plus 20 percent on all
projects, meaning immediate profit for the
rights holders. Per knowledgeable deal-
makers, Quibi is paying anywhere fromnecessarily as a first resort,” says
one rep, while another calls it “low-
hanging fruit” for someone who
wants to make sure a project gets
made. Both sources acknowledge
that they’ve yet to have a scenario
where Quibi beat out a more estab-
lished platform like Netflix for
a project.
Katzenberg says he doesn’t mind
buying up passed-over projects,
pointing to E.T. as a box office hit
that it took Spielberg years to get
made. “Great stories are great
stories,” he says. “There are things
that were developed for broadcast
as pilots that could actually be
reconceived pretty quickly and eas-
ily as something that would work
well for us.” Quibi picked up Scorpion creator
Nick Santora’s thriller pilot, for instance,
after it had failed to find a broadcast home.
Liam Hemsworth is now set to star.
It’s not lost on Katzenberg that he’s ask-
ing talent to take a leap of faith with Quibi.
Although he and Whitman have hired 160
employees, booked $100 million in adver-
tising commitments — including those
from blue-chip brands like Walmart, Pepsi,
Anheuser-Busch and Google — and plan to
spend $470 million to market Quibi, even they
don’t know how viewers will respond when
the service goes live in eight months. “We’re
going up on a high wire and there’s no safety
net underneath it,” he acknowledges. “We
understand what we’re doing fits somewhere
between improbable and impossible.”Jeffrey Katzenberg (right), pictured with Quibi CEO Meg Whitman at SXSW in March,
has aggressively promoted the April launch of the streamer to the industry.
$6 million to $15 million for scripted, film-
like “Lighthouses.” Unscripted “Quick Bites”
and current-events-focused “Daily Essentials”
from patrons including NBC News cost sig-
nificantly less.
The biggest challenge that Quibi faces
when it comes to attracting talent is one that
even Netflix dealt with early on: It’s rarely
a creator’s first choice. Fuqua, for example,
tried to make veteran drama #FreeRayShawn
as a film before taking it to Quibi. Of the
dozen creatives and representatives that
THR polled, nearly all agreed that Quibi has
quickly joined the list of outlets they will
visit when they’re pitching a new project. But
several sources acknowledged that it’s seen as
a backup if another, better offer doesn’t come
through. “We’ll put them in the mix, but notQuibi’s Snackable Content Tiers
Katzenberg’s mobile-only platform, designed for younger viewers who may watch in short breaks
throughout the day, aims to supply a steady stream of originals of varying length and scopeQuick Bites
Unscripted, serialized
programming like courtroom
show Chrissy’s Court
(starring Chrissy Teigen
and her mom) and a Punk’d
remake (from MTV Studios)
fill out the content mix.
Quibi will publish five Quick
Bites a day, five days a week.Daily Essentials
NBC News will produce a
twice-daily news update.
Quibi also plans to have
more than a dozen Daily
Essentials that will stream
seven days a week and
cover sports, weather,
music, celebrities and other
of-the-moment topics.Lighthouses
Katzenberg describes
scripted projects like
Steven Spielberg’s
After Dark as movies with
budgets up to $15 million
that will be released in daily
7- to 10-minute installments.
A new Lighthouse will
premiere every two weeks.