2020-03-26 The Hollywood Reporter

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 51 MARCH 26, 2020

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.

he sold DreamWorks Animation to

NBCUniversal for $3.8 billion in 2016,

he finally found his opportunity. A year

later, Whitman had just announced she

was stepping down as CEO of Hewlett-

Packard when she got a call from her

old friend. “He said, ‘What are you

doing?’ ” Whitman says, recalling that

she answered by listing all the things

she would do with her newfound free

time. “And he goes, ‘No, what are you

doing tonight for dinner?’ ”

So Katzenberg flew to Silicon

Valley and, during a three-hour meal,

persuaded the veteran tech execu-

tive and 2010 Republican nominee for

California governor to move to Los

Angeles to help him construct what

eventually would become Quibi. “I’ve

built things, and I’ve fixed really big

companies. In the end, it’s a bit more

fun to build,” she says.

With more than 80 years of work

experience between them, Katzenberg,

69, and Whitman, 63, have grown fond

of calling themselves “the old dogs”

leading Quibi, which has an average

employee age of 30. But these old dogs

talent that would woo subscribers. For

creators, there were questions about

what exactly Quibi would amount

to. But the money was good — Quibi

is spending more than $100,000

a minute on some of its top-shelf

shows — and it was offering unusual

licensing deals where, after two years,

studios could repackage the 10-minute

episodes into movies and take them

to market; and, after seven years,

they would regain the full rights to

the project.

Plus, Katzenberg was happily buy-

ing projects that had been gathering

dust for years. That was the case

with the Fuqua-produced drama

#FreeRayshawn, which the filmmaker

had been trying to get made into a

movie. “The script we had wasn’t

written for shortform,” says Fuqua,

“so I had to go back and rewrite it with

the writer and work with the direc-

tor. It had a strong impact on how you

approach the story. But it’s worth the

risk and challenge that comes with

it.” Nick Santora, writer and executive

producer on two Quibi shows —

Most Dangerous Game and the Kiefer

Sutherland thriller The Fugitive — was

impressed by how quickly Quibi moved

to make his shows. “Jeffrey Katzenberg

is not a guy to sit on his hands,” he

says. “If he wants it done, he’s going to

support you so it can get done.”

Katzenberg himself is often cited

as Quibi’s biggest draw. “Jeffrey’s

relationships with everybody in town

allowed him to get a lot of traction very

quickly,” says David Freeman, co-head

of CAA’s digital media group. “That

was crucial because it took a little bit

of time to get everybody to understand

what Quibi was.”

By all accounts, the mogul has

approached Quibi’s startup period

with the same zeal as he has his whole

career, from his days as Barry Diller’s

assistant at Paramount to his turn-

around of Disney’s box office during

the ’80s. But his hard-driving manage-

ment style (he’s known to call Quibi

senior management meetings on

Sundays) has ruffled some feathers,

and several high-profile executives

already have left, including former

DC Entertainment president Diane

Nelson, onetime Hulu dealmaker Tim

Connolly and Janice Min, former edito-

rial director of THR.

“I have a bottomless well of the need

to win and a thirst for it,” Katzenberg

concedes, “but everybody here knows

that. They came here knowing that.”

Quibi’s Content Universe

A 50-show slate will launch April 6 on the mobile-only streaming service,

now on track to release 175 original shows (or 8,500 pieces of bite-sized content) in its first year

are the only two people who could

have made an idea as ambitious as

Quibi happen.

Early on, Katzenberg said he would

need $2 billion in backing to make

Quibi a reality. He and Whitman didn’t

quite get there — they’ve raised a

total of $1.75 billion across two fund-

ing rounds from backers including

Madrone Capital and Alibaba — but

they did something arguably more

impressive. They lined up small invest-

ments from every major studio in

Hollywood — Disney and Warner Bros.

among them — and got them all to

agree to produce programming for the

service. The shortform video industry,

still largely derided as low-quality and

home-produced YouTube videos, had

never seen that level of investment

from the entertainment industry.

“That was the hardest thing we did,”

Katzenberg says. “It wasn’t about the

money. The essential thing in having

them as our partners was the access to

their showrunning talent and their IP.”

With the studios’ buy-in, Katzenberg

focused on assembling a roster of

Toth

Pell

Movies in

Chapters

Quibi will launch

with four of these

scripted stories

told in daily 7- to 10-

minute installments,

including:

Unscripted

& Docs

There are 19 of these

weekly, 10-minutes-

per-episode talk shows,

variety series and

narrative stories planned

for launch, including:

Daily

Essentials

More than two

dozen regularly updating

news and entertainment

briefings will be offered

in five- to six-minute

bites at launch, including:

Most

Dangerous Game:

The Nick

Santora- penned

action-thriller stars

Liam Hemsworth.

Survive:

Sophie Turner

leads this

novel adaptation

from director

Mark Pellington.

Flipped:

Will Forte and

Kaitlin Olson are

down-on-their-luck

home renovators

in this HGTV spoof.

Thanks a Million:

Celebrities give

back to those who

helped them in

this Jennifer Lopez-

produced series.

Chrissy’s Court:

Model-cookbook

author Chrissy

Teigen dons a robe

and presides over

small-claims cases.

Elba vs. Block:

Idris Elba goes

head-to-head

with race car

driver Ken Block

on increasingly

outrageous stunts.

Last Night’s

Late Night:

Entertainment

Weekly breaks

down the best

moments from

late-night TV.

The Daily Chill:

Meditation

and ASMR

combine with

peaceful visuals.

Morning Report/

Evening Report:

NBC News offers a

twice-daily update

on the stories

that matter most.

Content Release Plan Shows

Continued on page 72

From left: Elba vs. Block, 50 States of Fright, Dodge and Miles, Thanks a Million, Survive, Chrissy’s Court, Flipped

10fea_quibi_L [P]{Print}_53657977.indd 51 3/24/20 9:08 PM