Streaming service Quibi offers first in-depth look at CES 2020
Over the past year, the streaming startup Quibi has signed up so much talent — Steven Spielberg, Bill Murray, Kevin Hart, Idris Elba, Kiefer Sutherland, Andy Samberg and Chrissy Teigen, among the bigger names — it’s led consumers who are still getting used to the idea of Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus to ask, “What the heck’s a Quibi?”
The subscription service — so focused on short content that its name is an abbreviation of “quick bites,” even though it’s the same number of syllables — offered its first in-depth look Wednesday at the Park Theater as part of CES.
Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former Disney chairman and DreamWorks co-founder, and CEO Meg Whitman, the former Hewlett-Packard president and California gubernatorial candidate, took to the stage to preview the service. Set to launch April 6, the service’s content, presented in chapters of four to 10 minutes in length, is designed to be consumed by mobile users on the go.
The “turnstile” technology, demonstrated Wednesday, will let viewers switch their phones from portrait to landscape mode and back without missing anything. Some content will even change perspective, from a traditional cinematic experience in landscape mode to a view of the character’s phone when the user rotates to portrait mode.
Some content will play into the technological capabilities of the user’s phone. Spielberg wanted to create a scary story that could be watched only at night. Since phones always know what time it is, episodes of his “After Dark” will be unlocked after sundown, then disappear before sunrise.
During the presentation, Katzenberg previewed some of the 175 shows and 8,500 episodes promised during the service’s first year. The subscriptions — $4.99 with ads, $7.99 without — will come with more than three hours of new content each day, Whitman said.
Among the content deals Quibi already has made are a new take on “The Fugitive” with Sutherland, a revival of “Reno 911!” and an update of “Varsity Blues” — aka that 1999 Texas high school football movie that birthed the James Van Der Beek “I don’t want your life” meme.
Quibi has new versions of “Punk’d,” “Singled Out” and “Legends of the Hidden Temple,” as well as content partnerships with BBC News, NBC, ESPN, “60 Minutes” and the Weather Channel.
To illustrate Quibi’s focus on millennials, there are comedies about Nikki Fre$h, Nicole Richie’s hip-hop alter ego, and Kirby Jenner, Kendall Jenner’s fake twin.
That show that darn-near killed Zac Efron last month in Papua New Guinea? It’s for Quibi, and it’s called — wait for it — “Killing Zac Efron.”
There’s even a buddy comedy starring Anna Kendrick about a woman and her boyfriend’s sex doll — Kendrick plays the woman.
Seriously, be sure to check your email’s spam folder. You might have a development deal with Quibi and not even realize it.
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_onthecouch on Twitter.
