Jeff Katzenberg’s Mobile Streaming Service Quibi Will Launch Next April Starting at $4.99 a Month
After raising $1B even before launch, Quibi which was started by DreamWorks founder, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and former eBay CEO, Meg Whitman, revealed that the service will launch on April 6th. Quibi (short for quick bites) will focus on high-quality short form content that is designed to be watched on your smartphone. The serialized content will be 10-20 minutes in length and have some powerful storytellers behind them.
The mobile streaming streaming will offer two plans — $4.99 with ads and $7.99 without ads. The ad-supported product will include a pre-roll ad, as well as a 1-2 mid-roll ads depending on the length of the content. Quibi will have 7,000 pieces of contents available during year one — including one of the most buzzed, ‘Frat Boy Genius’, which tells the story of how Snapchat’s Founder, Evan Spiegel, created “one of the great social platforms of our time,” shared Katzenberg.
Quibi has also announced an original show based on Telemundo hit show ‘El Señor de los Cielos’, as well as a music competition show created and hosted by Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun. The company had previously announced that Filmmakers Sam Raimi (Spiderman), Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), and Antoine Fuqua (The Magnificent Seven) are all developing series for Quibi.
Under the deal with creators, Quibi will own the “segmented” version of the show exclusively for seven years. But, after two years the creator will own the rights to the full-length version. One example is Antoine Fuqua’s 2.5 hour project #Freerayshawn, which could be 10 episodes on Quibi, but the feature-length could then be shopped globally.
The goal is not to compete with Netflix, but to capture share of the mobile video audience that generally migrates to YouTube. In discussing the growth of mobile video, Katzenberg highlighted “Six years ago it was six minutes. A year and a half ago, it was 40 minutes. And today it’s 70 minutes. People love being able to watch great short form content on the go.