There is a tweet made by comedy writer Zach Raffio made on April 15th, 2020 that involves him filming another phone playing a short one-minute clip of the second episode (titled "The Golden Arm (Michigan) - Part 2") of Sam Raimi's horror anthology show called 50 States of Fright.
Personally, I found this clip to be unintentionally hilarious due to its overdramatic, cheesy writing and acting (such as Heather requesting her husband to "When I die, bury me with my golden arm" when she is on the grasp of dying and forcing him to say "I will bury you with your golden arm"), lack of a scary atmosphere, and the situation of Heather slowly beginning to die because of a "pulmonary gold disease" that is infecting her body being impossible to take seriously. I also found this clip to be a perfect metaphor of Quibi's problems, as they did die off and shutdown operations in winter this year, much like how Heather in the clip got sick and died during the winter season.
Aside from that clip, I don't know where Quibi's shows (aired or unaired) will end up, and though I never watched or downloaded the Quibi app before the shutdown (fun fact: the above-mentioned clip is the only viral video related to Quibi to gain popularity and the only reason I heard about it during its existence), I hope the creators of their programs can find a new home to stream their content so they don't stay lost forever.
It was a terrible idea from the start. While "bite sized" shows make sense on paper, people just don't really want to pay extra for that, it may have worked as a feature, but not as a product. Also if it would have worked, you can't really copyright the idea. Netflix would have just put out bite sized shows. Lastly, most youtube channels aim for about 10 min, and youtube is free.
According to Variety, "Actually, Quibi doesn’t own any of the big-budget premium content... The company has seven-year licenses on its short-form series; after two years, content owners have the right to assemble the shows and distribute them elsewhere." Now that streaming offers a cost-free way of releasing stuff that isn't worth releasing physically, I wouldn't be surprised if these start popping up on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
According to Variety, "Actually, Quibi doesn’t own any of the big-budget premium content... The company has seven-year licenses on its short-form series; after two years, content owners have the right to assemble the shows and distribute them elsewhere." Now that streaming offers a cost-free way of releasing stuff that isn't worth releasing physically, I wouldn't be surprised if these start popping up on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
According to Variety, "Actually, Quibi doesn’t own any of the big-budget premium content... The company has seven-year licenses on its short-form series; after two years, content owners have the right to assemble the shows and distribute them elsewhere." Now that streaming offers a cost-free way of releasing stuff that isn't worth releasing physically, I wouldn't be surprised if these start popping up on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
They are licensed to quibi, I wonder if the fact that they shut down would release them earlier?
Side note, it is so weird to see the eBay founder (Whitman) and the pixar guy (Katzenberg) invest in such a predictably terrible idea.
You are right about Meg Whitman being one of the key people of eBay (though the actual founder credit would belong to Pierre Omidyar, though she certainly did help popularize the website during her time as a CEO and president there) prior to running Quibi, but Jeffrey Katzenberg was a co-founder of both DreamWorks Pictures and its former animation department DreamWorks Animation along with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen in 1994 (which he remained on board with when DWA splitted off from DreamWorks in 2004 and continued to run as a CEO of the company until DWA was brought out by NBCUniversal/Comcast in 2016), not Pixar (which was founded as an independent company by Steve Jobs from Lucasfilm (itself now ironically a subsidary of Disney since 2012) in 1986, and was acquired by Disney in 2006).
Though to be fair, Katzenberg did have a long and successful run as a chairman of The Walt Disney Studios until he was outed of the studio in 1995 for having a direct role in the infamous "Black Friday cut" reel of Pixar's 1995 CGI animated film Toy Story as well as other issues during his time as chairman.
The idea and fact that Quibi doesn't actually own the rights to the shows that were produced and aired on the streaming service and were instead held on by their creators, to me was another sign that Quibi was going to be dead on arrival because even if the streaming service had caught on, they would soon lose the rights to stream the show on their platform and as pointed out before, you can't copyright the idea of short-form media and short-form media only really works on websites like YouTube, which you can already view videos for free, a compilation or a collection of old/new short films (either on physical media or digitally) and as bonus features on a DVD/Blu-Ray/streaming service.
Despite the frustrations of normal day life we go through, the best thing to do about it is still being happy for our friends and family.
Roku has acquired Quibi's content library and plans to stream it for free:
Roku, Inc. (NASDAQ: ROKU) announced today that The Roku Channel will become the exclusive place to stream more than 75 premium shows and documentaries that Quibi created in conjunction with Hollywood’s leading studios and production companies. Roku acquired the exclusive global distribution rights to Quibi’s award-winning shows and will make the content available for free on an ad-supported basis in 2021 to all Roku users.
The Quibi content includes Emmy award-winning scripted series, alternative and reality programming and documentaries featuring stars such as Idris Elba, Kevin Hart, Liam Hemsworth, Anna Kendrick, Nicole Richie, Chrissy Teigen, and Lena Waithe. In addition to the full range of titles that had previously premiered on Quibi, more than a dozen new programs will make their exclusive debut on The Roku Channel.
I genuinely didn't expect for Roku to actually pick up the rights to a majority of Quibi's shows to put up on their streaming platform (The Roku Channel) for free, albeit with ads!
Though I use Roku on several of my TVs to stream content like Disney+ and Netflix, I don't think I would like to stream any of Quibi's content that Roku would make available on their channel. However, it's at least good news for their shows that didn't complete their runs before the app shut down and for them to find a new home after just one month. Plus, since The Roku Channel is free, that means you don't have to pay a $4.99 (ad-supported)/$7.99 (free of ads) subscription fee to continue watching shows on the platform, so that at least Roku has a huge advantage over Quibi anyway.
Here is Roku's announcement of their acquisition of Quibi's content (since the link keeps sending me to the products page that Roku offers, you would have to go down to the bottom of the website's page to find the Roku Blog section to the right from Roku's official social media accounts and click on it to find the blog post): blog.roku.com/quibi
Last Edit: Jan 9, 2021 0:41:51 GMT by Happy Brian: Adding a note about Roku's website.
Despite the frustrations of normal day life we go through, the best thing to do about it is still being happy for our friends and family.
I genuinely didn't expect for Roku to actually pick up the rights to a majority of Quibi's shows to put up on their streaming platform (The Roku Channel) for free, albeit with ads!
Though I use Roku on several of my TVs to stream content like Disney+ and Netflix, I don't think I would like to stream any of Quibi's content that Roku would make available on their channel. However, it's at least good news for their shows that didn't complete their runs before the app shut down and for them to find a new home after just one month. Plus, since The Roku Channel is free, that means you don't have to pay a $4.99 (ad-supported)/$7.99 (free of ads) subscription fee to continue watching shows on the platform, so that at least Roku has a huge advantage over Quibi anyway.
Here is Roku's announcement of their acquisition of Quibi's content (since the link keeps sending me to the products page that Roku offers, you would have to go down to the bottom of the website's page to find the Roku Blog section to the right from Roku's official social media accounts and click on it to find the blog post): blog.roku.com/quibi
Sounds great! Hopefully the better shows see some success with this.
