By Roger Jackson
Previously: Mistakes Made, Lessons Learned…
Hulu
Hulu has been much in the news this past week. Owned jointly by Fox, Disney and Comcast, it was on the auction block and expected to fetch north of a billion dollars. But the owners changed their minds, and decided instead to invest $750m in a global expansion. Which makes sense — they have great TV content from the parent companies, supplied on a “day after air date.” They have a brand with a fair amount of global recognition. And they have an impressive technology platform.. Hulu have already expanded internationally into Japan, so it makes sense to invest in the rest of the world. Bottom line: they’ve built a highly scalable platform and user experience, and VoD is catching on fast in Europe and Asia, so now’s a great time to launch Hulu Global.
I want to share some early experiences and numbers from the trenches of Hulu. Why Kinonation films are succeeding on that platform. Or not. Here are some examples. My only (tentative) conclusion so far — films with a specific niche — whether documentary or narrative feature — have a guaranteed VoD audience, and are way easier to “market.” While more general movies — narrative features with lo or no talent — much tougher. Sad, but, I think, true. And not terribly profound insight.
Here’s the pitch we did for this film: “Written and directed by ER’s Lily Mariye, this gritty, sexually frank coming-of-age story has won 11 awards. Set in inner-city Los Angeles. Stars the immensely sympathetic newcomer Nichole Bloom in a compelling, cross-cultural, character-driven drama.” Went live on Hulu on July 8th, and 2 days later was being watched four thousands times a day. That’s more in one day than the film had been watched during it’s entire festival run. I contacted director Lily Mariye…said, whatever you’re doing, keep it up. Lily was a regular on ER, so I figured she’d somehow mobilized her fan base to watch Model Minority. Lily was surprised…I’ve done nothing…but I’ll start now, she said. What’s the takeaway? Success is hard to predict, marketing may or may not help. MM is quite simply a really good film – read the Hulu reviews — and really good tends to succeed. Can’t help but point to its 8/10 IMDb rating, which appears, in this case, to be a predictor of success. And it has a niche – not simply “minorities” (way too big of a niche) but model minorities (such as Japanese-Americans) who have absurd cultural pressure to succeed. Still doing great — views going down but still at 2k/day. That’s like a ten theater release!
Has been live on Hulu for just 14 days. Tragically compelling poster. Watched more than twenty thousand times already. This is a documentary with a message that will profoundly affect our lives. It’s one of those films that provokes a response of “if you care, you must watch this.”
Live since June 14th, this film had the usual first week bump (approx 500 views per day) before settling down to a consistent 100+view/day. I love this film — it has everything I adore in European cinema…massively flawed characters, erudite but improbable dialogue, and random, inexplicable tragedy. And inexplicable success. I have a feeling there’s a profound lack of Spanish language films on American VoD outlets. It’s been live almost 3 months and still getting 100+ views/day — think art house cinema on a rainy Tuesday.
Talent doesn’t exactly trump all other factors, but it certainly helps. Missing Pieces stars Mark Boone Jr from cult show Sons of Anarchy. Plus it’s a truly amazing indie film with dozens of rave reviews. But…it has performed just OK on Hulu — peaking at 600 views/day and dropping down this week to the low hundreds. These aren’t the spectacular numbers this film deserves. Hard to explain. My only comment is that the complexity and nuance of Missing Pieces makes for a great theater experience…and probably a challenging small screen affair.
This is a documentary produced in 2007 and released in 2009. It appeared on Logo, Viacom’s gay channel. It’s a tad dated — a lot has happened to gay rights in the past 6 years. But it’s still compelling, and remains effective as “change the world” documentary filmmaking. Meanwhile, it is getting watched, and I’m confident it’ll do well on other platforms as we roll it out. Currently averaging 200 views/day.
But Is It Sustainable?
These films are currently succeeding on VoD. But will they be sustainable? In 6 months, what will be their numbers? How can filmmakers work to retain this audience passion? This is the holy grail of VoD marketing — how can I make an on-going living from VoD? Is it even possible, for God’s sake. To be continued…
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Next Up: Post # 33: VoD: Frequently Asked Questions
Roger Jackson is a producer and the co-founder of film distribution start-up KinoNation. He was Vice President, Content for digital film pioneer iFilm.com and has produced short films in Los Angeles, documentaries in Darfur, Palestine and Bangladesh, a reality series for VH1 and one rather bad movie for FuelTV. You can reach him at roger@kinonation.com.
