Steven Spielberg is penning a horror collection for Quibi that users will handiest be able to see while their smartphone is aware of it’s darkish outdoor, founder Jeffrey Katzenberg stated on Sunday.
Katzenberg became at the Banff World Media Festival in Canada to reply higher questions on his and CEO Meg Whitman’s burgeoning quick shape programming incubator and additionally discovered more programming plans.
“Steven Spielberg came in, and stated, ‘I have an extraordinary scary tale I need to do,’” Katzenberg stated. “He’s writing it himself. He hasn’t [written anything in a while] so getting him to put in writing something is terrific.”
Katzenberg said Spielberg has already “written 5 or six episodes (which Quibi calls “chapters,” like a singular) of a ten- or 12-chapter tale.” The application is being developed underneath the title “Spielberg’s After Dark.” (Spielberg is likewise developing a revival of his anthology collection “Amazing Stories” for any other new content programmer, Apple TV Plus.)
Spielberg had an unusual request; however: He desired visitors only to have the ability to observe the program after the middle of the night. Given that phones can tune where it’s miles in the meanwhile — and preserve tabs on when the solar rises and units in its area — Katzenberg and Whitman challenged their engineers to provide you with an idea for how to view the show when it’s spooky out.
The result: A clock will appear on telephones, ticking down until solar sets in anyplace that user is until it’s gone. Then the clock begins ticking again to while the sun comes lower back up — and the display will disappear until the subsequent night time.
Short for “brief bites,” Quibi has raised $1 billion from traders for an April 2020 launch, with extra funding to come, and is hoping to trigger a “third technology of movie narrative,” following films and TV. But don’t name it brief form, Katzenberg said.
“What Quibi is doing, it’s no longer short shape,” he stated. “We’re setting the one’s sciences collectively. Chapters or act breaks which are 7 to ten minutes long. They are in particular shot to be watched on the go. If you’re 25-35 years antique, you get up, and you’re on [a smartphone] for over five hours.”
At release, Quibi will provide a -week unfastened trial length, and have 8 “first-rate top rate” productions (which Katzenberg still knew as “movies”) prepared to view. After that, there may be 26 greater “lighthouse” (study: signature tasks) productions with a purpose to roll out, every different Monday, for the first year.
These tasks, he said, maybe the equal to what “House of Cards” changed into for Netflix and “The Handmaid’s Tale” has been for Hulu.
Quibi can even offer similarly, “a first-rate collection of opportunity programming, non-scripted,” and a “Daily Essentials” news product.
All informed, Katzenberg said Quibi would provide 125 portions of content every week — or 7,000 parts in yr one.
Katzenberg and Whitman (who did no longer attend the Banff event) had been on a piece of an industry roadshow in recent months, providing up diverse explainers approximately the service to industry crowds. Katzenberg discovered over the weekend at the Produced By convention that Quibi could have pricing ranges at release on April 6, 2020. The first fees $four.99 with one pre-roll ad before each video segment — a 10-2d advert if the video is much less than 5 minutes and a 15-2nd ad for five-10 minute movies. An advert-loose option will fee $7.99.
“We ought to have an amount,” Katzenberg said of the funding in Quibi. “You can’t take an episode of ‘Game of Thrones’ and cut it up; it’s crap, it doesn’t work. The best manner to get to the extent as if each person receives on board, into the same boat and rowing in the same path.”
And that’s why, Katzenberg stated, sincerely each primary media conglomerate is an investor in Quibi.
Besides Spielberg, expertise which has already been tapped to produce for Quibi or famous person in its tasks include Steven Soderbergh, Guillermo del Toro, Sam Raimi, Catherine Hardwick, Anna Kendrick, Doug Liman, Laurence Fishburne and Antoine Fuqua. Animated fare includes “Doomlands,” from Blue Ant Studios’ Look Mom! Prods.
“Those folks who are the maximum skilled and gifted inside the TV enterprise today are going to be those who make Quibi a success,” he stated. “If we’re proper this will become a boom for the whole industry… If we are successful, we can have introduced in this 0.33 era of movie narrative.”
