Quibi
Kiernan Shipka and Diane Kruger on How Real Hollywood Can Be Just as Brutal as Swimming With Sharks
Kiernan Shipka has some unconventional advice for getting to know a new co-star — do drugs with them. Or pretend to do drugs with them, as she tells Consequence. The Mad Men and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina alum stars with Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds, National Treasure) in Swimming With Sharks, a six-episode limited series that was originally produced to debut on the dearly departed streaming service Quibi. After Quibi shut down literally as the series was finishing up production, it (along with other Quibi series) was rescued by the Roku Channel for distribution. Based on the acclaimed 1994 indie film about a young assistant dealing with a tyrannical Hollywood boss, creator Kathleen Robertson flipped the genders of the leads to introduce the character of Lou Simms (Shipka), an as...
Roku Purchases Quibi’s Library
It’s about nine months too late, but you’ll soon finally be able to watch Quibi shows on your television. Via Deadline, Roku has acquired 75 titles from the Quibi library that will stream for free with commercials on the Roku Channel. Quibi launched last April with a billion dollars in funding and a dream: to reinvent streaming with “quick bites” of content beamed straight to your mobile phone. The platform’s hopes of gripping an on-the-go populace with ten-minute stories quickly came up against the pandemic; suddenly with too much time on their hands, the target audience was craving binge-watching marathons, not short chapters. Worse, Quibi wasn’t compatible with streaming hardware like Rokus or Amazon Fire TV, which meant people trapped on the couch couldn’t watch it on their TVs. Quibi ...
Hollywood-backed Quibi to shutter six months after launch
Streaming service Quibi said on Wednesday it intends to wind down its operations and start a process to sell its assets, just six months after its launch. The announcement highlights the dominance that Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+ hold over smaller streaming service providers, which struggle to keep up against their large content budgets and vast libraries of shows. “The world has changed dramatically since Quibi launched and our standalone business model is no longer viable,” founder Jeffrey Katzenberg said in a statement. Los Angeles-based Quibi offers entertainment and news in episodes of 10 minutes or less on mobile phones, initially promoted for on-the-go viewing. The service was priced at $5 a month with advertisements, or $8 a month without them. “Our failure...
Quibi Is Shutting Down After Only Six Months
Quibi, the short-form mobile streaming service that launched this April, is shutting itself down just six months after launching. According to The Wall Street Journal, Quibi Holdings LLC has decided to end the short-form content experiment in the face of lower-than-expected viewership, the threat of legal action, and a litany of other issues. Founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman reportedly told investors of their decision the kill Quibi on a conference call Wednesday afternoon. It’s hard to point to one singular reason as the cause of Quibi’s demise. After raising $1.75 billion, the platform spent dozens of millions on promotion, notably by buying multiple TV ad slots during the Super Bowl and the Oscars. They offered a free 90-day trial early on, but statistics reveal the app wa...
“Weird Al” Plays a Trigger-Happy Ted Nugent in Reno 911! Reboot: Watch
Earlier this year, it was revealed that “Weird Al” Yankovic would be portraying Ted Nugent on the Quibi reboot of Reno 911!. Now, we have a full clip of our favorite parody expert fully embodying the disgraced Southern rocker/right-wing asshole. In a scene titled “T-Shirt Gun”, one of Nugent’s employees meets him before a political rally to show him the high-powered t-shirt cannon that he prepared for use on stage. Nugent jokes about putting a silencer on it and the two laugh, but as Nugent approaches the scrum of police officers and screaming fans, he accidentally takes the stage with a different long rifle. Hilarity ensues, but we won’t spoil the fun for ya. Watch the video below. Editors’ Picks The bit is from the latest episode of the police show satire, which airs on the mobile-...
Reno 911! and the Thin Blue Line Between Satire and Cruelty
In a world where micro-streaming service Quibi was watched by anyone except exhausted culture writers assigned to cover it, their relaunch of the mockumentary sketch show Reno 911! would take up at least a couple days’ worth of exhaustive Twitter culture war discourse. For what it’s worth, the cast of the acclaimed Comedy Central show are all back and haven’t missed a step, sliding back into their roles as if no time has passed. Unfortunately, that same sense of nostalgic comfort is also the show’s greatest weakness; for better and for worse, the show (and its sense of humor) hasn’t changed a whit since it went off the air in 2009. In the Bush-era heyday of Reno 911!, the show perfectly fit that South Park peak of edgy, subversive humor. The sketch-based, improv-heavy nature...
