THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 72 MARCH 26, 2020
QUIBI
Continued from page 51While Katzenberg has been
busy building Quibi’s content
slate, Whitman has been focused
on developing its operations,
striking a technology partner-
ship with Google and booking
$150 million in advertising
commitments from brands like
Procter & Gamble, Walmart and
PepsiCo. She also negotiated a
distribution partnership with
T-Mobile that will see Quibi
bundled along with some wire-
less plans and subs offered early
access to certain programming.
It’s a deal that Greenfield suggests
could give Quibi its biggest advan-
tage in the race to acquire subs.
The carrier, which will have 100
million customers following the
finalization of its deal to acquire
Sprint, could help boost Quibi to
10 million subs in its first year,
he forecasts, though he notes,
“Ultimately, for this to really
work, they need tens of millions
of subscribers over time. They’re
playing for a lot more than 5 or
6 million subscribers.”
Whitman recently came under
fire after The Information tech
news site reported that, during a
company all-hands, she likened
the journalist-source relationship
to that of sexual predators who
groom their subjects. She since
has issued a public mea culpa. “I
felt really badly about it,” she says.
“It was a mistake.”
Though Katzenberg and
Whitman’s differing styles have
led to whispers that they are on
the outs, Whitman insists she
has no plans to leave. “Jeffrey and
I get along great,” she responds.
“Yeah, there are times when we
get into arguments, but that’s
because we come at things
so d i f ferent ly.”
Adds Katzenberg: “What we
have come to value and appreci-
ate in one another is that we are
opposites. But let me be really
clear, there would be no Quibi
without Meg Whitman. Her
contributions to this place will
never, ever get the credit that she
absolutely deserves.”For years, Katzenberg woke at 5 a.m.
and worked out for two hours
before holding back-to-backbreakfast meetings. Lately,
he’s been setting his alarm for
3:30 a.m. to watch test footage
from Quibi’s Daily Essentials
— which will provide regular
updates on everything from news
to sports to pop culture — and
deliver notes before the shows’
largely New York-based creative
teams start their workday.
In the absence of library con-
tent, those shows — which make
up more than a third of Quibi’s
launch programming — will be
central to keeping viewers com-
ing back day after day, which is
why the company has gone out
of its way to make sure produc-
tion can continue in the midst of
coronavirus-related shutdowns.
When possible, producers are
sending cameras, lighting and
set backdrops directly to tal-
ent so they can shoot at home.
Figure skater Adam Rippon,
whose This Day in Useless
Celebrity History is set to debut a
few weeks after Quibi’s launch,
took to Instagram on March 21
to show off the equipment that
had just been “dropped off at the
front door,” explaining that he’d
been taught how to set it up over
Apple’s FaceTime.
Despite the challenges to
the Daily Essentials produc-
tions, Quibi top brass says that
most of its launch slate won’t be
impacted since production on its
serialized shows (called Movies
in Chapters) and unscripted
series has largely been com-
pleted. Jim Toth, the former CAA
agent who joined Quibi in 2019 to
head content acquisition and tal-
ent, estimates that the company
has enough programming lined
up that it can keep releasing
new shows through its first six
months. “We’re confident in our
ability to bring subscribers new
content on a weekly basis well
into fall, actually,” he says. Even
shows planned for post-launch
premieres, like Murd er, Sh e
Wrote spoof Mapleworth Murders
from former Saturday Night Live
writer Paula Pell, are largely in
the can and ready to be released.
“Especially these days, it’s nice
to know that we can make people
laugh,” Pell says.
And, like most networks in
town, Quibi development execs
continue to hear pitches andare even, according to sources,
quietly encouraging some fresh-
man shows to prepare scripts for
second seasons — all so produc-
tion can quickly resume once
Hollywood returns to normal.
Quibi’s tech team has had
a much easier time making
adjustments. Whitman’s daily
90-minute “war room” meet-
ing, where they run through
final adjustments to the app,
went virtual a week before Quibi
made work-from-home manda-
tory. “Everyone’s getting better
at Zoom,” she says with a chuckle.
Because Quibi was developed
on the cloud, she adds, there
are no concerns about launch-
ing it remotely: “If we had a data
center like I did at eBay 20 years
ago, it might be a different
thing.” (The company’s Turnstyle
technology that allows people to
view videos in either horizontal or
vertical orientation is the subjectOne of the reasons Katzenberg
and Whitman are eager to release
Quibi is so that they can start to
receive data about how people
are using the app. They’ve been
holding tastemaker screenings
around Hollywood and have done
some market testing, but it’s not
the same as real-time feedback
from real users. “I’d like to get the
app out in the wild,” she explains.
“I’d like real customers to experi-
ence the content. I just want to
see how they react, what they
watch, what they think about it.”
Though the pair decline to
share how many subs they are
targeting in Quibi’s first year,
Disney+ — with its 10 million
sign-ups in 24 hours — this
won’t be. “Hulu, Showtime,
HBO, Netflix, none of them has
ever behaved that way, and we
won’t likely either,” Katzenberg
says. “We’re not going to be a
rocket ship.”Jeffrey and I get along great.
Yeah, there are times when
we get into arguments,
but that’s because we come
at things so differently.”
WHITMANof a patent infringement lawsuit
that Quibi is calling “a campaign
of threats and harassment.”)
Even Quibi’s freshly deposited
funding — $750 million from
undisclosed backers — and adver-
tising commitments are secure,
she says, despite the recent stock
market slide and ensuing finan-
cial panic.
Despite all their big talk over
the past two years about what
they’ve been building, Katzenberg
and Whitman are muted about
their expectations for Quibi.
“I would be very disappointed
if somebody misinterpreted
confidence as arrogance
because I don’t have any of that,”
Katzenberg says. “I actually have
a great deal of humility about
[the fact that] we are about to
be schooled by our customers. I
am thrilled that, in real time, we
will actually be able to see with
extraordinary precision what
they want to watch and the way in
which they want to watch it.”Still, Whitman says the com-
pany has the financial runway
to reach its goals, regardless of
how long it takes for daily life
to return to normal: “We’ve got
plenty of time. We’re good.”
At Quibi’s headquarters on the
second Thursday in March, just a
few days before the company will
shutter its offices to wait out the
pandemic, Katzenberg jumps out
of the seat he’s been occupying
inside a glass-walled conference
room and walks to the white-
board on the opposite side of the
room. He has a point he wants to
make: “If you want to be unique,
and you want to be original, those
things equal risky,” he says as he
scrawls the words in blue marker.
He’s no novice. He’s heard the
whispers about Quibi’s chal-
lenges, and he’s unfazed. “I’m not
fearful,” he says as an unseason-
able L.A. rainstorm pounds the
window behind him. “Failure is
something that could happen. It’s
not going to, but it could.”10fea_quibi_L [P]{Print}_53657977.indd 72 3/24/20 9:08 PM