While Quibi may have shut down in December, their content library appears to have a second life. According to a report by the WSJ, Roku is nearing a deal for Quibi’s library of content. This would include Quibi’s library of shows like “Most Dangerous Game”, “Flipped” , “Murder House Flip”, and “Dummy” with Anna Kendrick.
Quibi doesn’t own the content outright, but has a seven-year license to the short-form version of the shows and films. The one hang-up according to the report, is that the contract may prohibit some of the content from appearing on another platform.
If a deal was to go through, it would likely live in “The Roku Channel”, the device platform’s free streaming service. The free streaming service is available on Roku streaming players, but recently launched on Amazon Fire TV, iOS, and Android.
In November, said that the The Roku Channel now reaches 54 million active accounts.
Just over six months after launching, Quibi shut down in December after raising close to $2B in investment. Prior to the shutdown, the company’s founder, Jeff Katzenberg, tried to sell Quibi’s programming to companies such as NBCUniversal and Facebook to no avail. This followed several weeks of trying to get companies such as Apple, Facebook and WarnerMedia to buy the service as a whole.