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Tubi (www.tubi.tv), a division of FOX Entertainment, cinephile favorite Drafthouse Films and the digital distribution label Giant Pictures have signed an exclusive content deal for nearly 40 Drafthouse Films titles now streaming for free on Tubi. The collaboration marks the first time nearly the full slate of Draft house’s premium English and foreign language titles will be available on a single streaming service. On this occasion we had an interview with Adam Lewinson, Chief Content Officer, Tubi.
Amir Ganjavie, Universal Cinema Magazine (UM): Can you say more about this new deal between Tubi, Drafthouse Films and Giant Pictures?
Adam Lewinson (AL): Yes, absolutely. This is the first time that Drafthouse Films and the majority of their library has been pulled together on a streaming platform, let alone a free streaming platform like Tubi. So the bulk of their library for the next two months is available exclusively and free on Tubi. So between Tubi, Drafthouse Films and Giant Pictures, who’s our partner, who’s been the glue in this deal, it really gives us this great opportunity to collect, a really eclectic variety of movies, of Indie movies, that really appeal to cinephiles and I can talk more about it. But also, if you go into the Tubi app, we have a Drafthouse Films section right now where you can see all of these movies aggregated all together. For fans of interesting, Indie movies overall, it’s all there for you to dig around and find what you want to watch.
(UM): The new deal with Giant Picture somehow implies that you became more interested in quality arthouse films as you mentioned. Is it a new strategy or are you still branding yourself as the streaming service with the most titles available for different audiences?
(AL): Yeah. Amir, it’s a great question and ultimately our business is about quality and quantity and it always has been. So yes, we have 30,000 titles. One of the largest streaming library for movies and series that’s out there. But really from day one, we’ve been very dedicated to the independent film space and every type of genre and documentary as well, because there’s a fair number of really interesting documentaries with this Drafthouse Films deal. Just to give you an example, earlier this year, we had the world premiere of a movie called “Beast Beast”, another really interesting high-quality Indie film that we really wanted to feature for our viewers. I’ll say, one other thing too, so much of viewing these days is about microtargeting and it’s about people streaming on their individual devices and certainly people get together communally and watch football, the best singer, some of these larger events. But more frequently, people are watching their own thing. So there are certainly some viewers at Tubi who may not be interested in this type of content, they’re watching other types of content. That’s fine. What we’re able to do is identify our viewers, these are the cinephiles. These are the ones who are interested in having different experiences, seeing some really visionary, some artful films, really unusual films and not just from the domestic US, really films that are from all around the world and I’m happy to go into more detail. A lot of this gets powered by our content personalization experience, powered by algorithms. Once you start watching certain types of movie, we’re going to get a good sense of who you are and what you want to watch. For instance, we’ve had a movie, called “High-Rise” starring Tom Hiddleston, really kind of a fun, intimate thriller with a really good cast, directed by Ben Wheatley. So for viewers who watch that, our algorithms now are great. But we also now have, thanks to the Drafthouse deal, this movie “A Field in England” which predated it. So it’s more likely that our algorithms will either present that movie or viewers themselves will surf around, looking for choices and things to watch on Tubi. They’ll settle on maybe the Drafthouse category or maybe they’ll just find this particular movie and start watching. So, hopefully, that gives you a little insight into our viewership and how our viewers discover what they want to watch.
(UM): In the past, exclusivity was not a real concern for you. How about this deal? You mentioned that for two months, it will be exclusive? And what about the rest, are they exclusive to Tubi, these new titles?
(AL): A very large chunk of this deal is exclusive and we now have a big mix of exclusive and non-exclusive content, depending on the deals. So, for instance, the “Beast Beast” movie I mentioned previously is an exclusive. We have another very different indie called, “Lazarus”, sort of a superhero movie but still very independent spirited. So yeah, deals are a little bit all over the place. I think specific to Drafthouse, what was really appealing to all sides is our ability to aggregate all of these together and create this exclusive offering and create a really exciting promotional window, ultimately to help generate interest and awareness in people watching these Drafthouse titles.
(UM): You spoke about the importance of supporting Indie Films for your new project and most of these Indie Films don’t have for example, a producer or big company. How do you pick right now with your new strategy a film for distribution? Can for example, a filmmaker approach you if he had a good project in hand or are you working exclusively with established companies?
(AL): We do typically work with established content providers. And at this point, we have well over 250 partners that we work with. I wish my team and I had the time to look through everything. Sadly, we just don’t. But occasionally, things happen to get to us, usually through a festival, where we might be interested in acquiring it and then typically we might do that through a third party. But I will say for independent filmmakers, as someone who went to the American Film Institute and has certainly, before Tubi, played in the world of independent film and independent film financing, and trying to put films together, I know it’s a tremendously difficult journey. The good news is that streaming in general and certainly platforms, like Tubi, have made it easier to get to an audience, to find a distributor, like Giant, who’s willing to pick up your movie and try to get to the right audience.
(UM): I watched the 2019 interview between Tubi CEO and Variety in which your CEO said he’s not interested in original content. But apparently this has changed. I read recently that you had increased the number of original titles. Can you say more about this?
(AL): I’m happy to. About a year ago, we were acquired by Fox and as our companies have been merging together over the past 12 months, we really saw an opportunity and saw how this is the right moment in Tubi’s evolution to produce this slate of original programming. It’s definitely going to be a very diverse slate. We are going to be focusing on a lot of premium independent titles and focusing a lot on the key genres that really resonate with our viewers. So for instance, thrillers, sci-fi, horror movies, romance, westerns, etc. but lots of movies in our very popular black cinema category, the most popular categories on Tubi movies, a percent in Spanish for our Tubi en Español category, content for Tubi kids, which is our kids category, but also documentaries. So I benefit from working closely with some really phenomenal creative executives across Fox including the Fox Alternative Entertainment team. There’s lots of really interesting documentary subjects that we’re going to dive into. One other category I’ll cover is Benton’s one of the very best animation houses in Hollywood, producing series like Bob’s Burgers, and together, we’re going to be making some animated titles as well. Ultimately, our goal here and our goal overall is to super serve our audience and really do it at scale. I think one thing that’s going to distinguish our original programming efforts is we’re very focused on content intelligence and we have so much data about what our viewers are watching and what they want more of, and really using that data to help them form some choices as we dive in to this. You can imagine, there are lots of choices out there, not not just obviously for viewers, but if you decide that you’re going to produce original content, there’s a lot of people and a lot of scripts and certainly knowing our audience really well and wanting to super serve their needs, this is for sure one way to do it. So it’s really a strategy that we’ve designed with the audience in mind.
(UM): You talked a lot about audience preference, on audience choices and the fact that you are doing different kinds of statistics, have you seen any kind of change in audience preference as a result of Covid?
(AL): Obviously, streaming viewership has been up across the board for many platforms. Certainly, it’s been up for Tubi and during this really difficult period in our history, I’ve been really heartened to hear from so many of our viewers, just thankful that they have this free source of entertainment during this difficult time and probably not just the health impact, but also the economic impact. For a lot of people out there, they don’t really want to spend money on subscription services these days or they want to cut down and they still want to be entertained. So that’s been really great. There definitely has been a gravitation toward comfort TV watching but what’s interesting is comfort TV is in the eye of the beholder. So for you and I, if we were to compare what we’re watching for comfort television is probably quite different, but there’s definitely trends. And then Nostalgia TV, we’ve definitely seen a spike in viewership. So Tubi right now, for some people, Nostalgia. For others, it’s Colombo, for still others, it’s “Fantasy Island” or “The Partridge Family”. So that’s definitely been resonating with viewers. I’ll also say “Kitchen Family” or before the pandemic, we had launched our Tubi kids section. This is already a very dynamic piece of our business. It’s really grown exponentially over the past year. Some parents have been in need of some digital babysitting and or just some great quality free entertainment, whether it’s their kids watching alone, in an age appropriate environment or family code viewing. And so, we’ve seen just some obviously very popular brand name content from brands such as “Scooby-Doo” and “Lego”, as a few examples, really thriving. We just launched “The Flintstones”, which is already off to a phenomenal start and that’s certainly a show that has crossed generational appeal and I think lots of lots of co-viewing hours to be found. And then I’ll just say this; I think, increasingly these days, if you really want to get some insight into who somebody is, ask them what’s in their queue. It will tell you a tale about that person’s interests and it’ll be different. Some people, they want to watch high quality science fiction, other people want to watch some fun reality TV. Some people want to watch, “Gordon Ramsay” and “Hell’s Kitchen” as an example or “The Masked Singer’ and it really paints a picture. That’s a piece of benefit that we’ve been serving to our viewers, not just over the past year but since we’ve launched, and into the future really just to provide a personalized experience. So for what you’re interested in watching, we’ll be able to curate that experience for you. And there’s always times when you want to try something new and we offer that as well. And that’s why… just to come full circle, Amir. One of the main reasons why we’re excited about this partnership with Alamo Drafthouse because it’s just a bunch of really fun, eclectic, sometimes challenging, interesting films. For some viewers, this is their bread and butter and they want to watch all of it and dig in. For others, they may experiment. As I am, I have several Drafthouse movies in my queue and I’ll probably dig into some of them this weekend.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.