Steven Spielberg writes series of horror for Quibi but only for the night – Variety



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Steven Spielberg writes for Quibi a series of horror that users will only see when their phone is black, announces its founder, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Sunday.

Katzenberg was at the Banff World Media Festival in Canada to answer more questions about her burgeoning incubator of abbreviated programs, Meg Whitman, and also revealed new program plans.

Steven Spielberg came in and said, "I have a very scary story to make," said Katzenberg, "He writes it himself." He did not [written anything in a while] so to make it write something is fantastic. "

Katzenberg said that Spielberg had already "written five or six episodes (what Quibi calls" chapters ", as a novel) of a narrative of 10 or 12 chapters." is also developing a relaunch of its "Amazing Stories" anthologies series for another new content programmer, Apple TV Plus.)

Spielberg, however, had an unusual request: he wanted the viewers to watch the program only after midnight. Since phones can pinpoint the current situation and stay on course as the sun rises and sets in the area, Katzenberg and Whitman challenged their engineers to come up with an idea of ​​how to see the show when it was disaster.

Result: a clock will appear on the phones until the sun goes down wherever it is, until it is completely gone. Then the countdown begins at the time of sunrise – and the show will disappear until the next night.

Quibi has raised $ 1 billion from investors for a launch in April 2020, with additional funding coming, and hopes to unleash a "third generation of movie storytelling", following movies and television. But do not call it abbreviated form, said Katzenberg.

"What Quibi does is not really a short form," he said. "We put these sciences together. Chapters or breaks of acts of 7 to 10 minutes. They are specifically shot to be watched on the move. If you are between 25 and 35 years old, you get up and you are on [a smartphone] for more than five hours. "

At launch, Quibi will offer a free two-week trial period and will have eight "super premium" productions (which Katzenberg still calls "movies") ready for viewing. After that, there will be 26 other "flagship" productions (read: flagship projects) to be launched every Monday for the first year.

These projects, he said, would mean that "House of Cards" was for Netflix and "The Handmaid's Tale" was for Hulu.

Quibi will also be offering "a large assortment of alternative, non-scripted programs" and a "Daily Essentials" information product.

In total, Katzenberg said Quibi would offer 125 content per week, or 7,000 content in the first year.

Katzenberg and Whitman (who did not attend the Banff event) have organized an industry tour in recent months, offering various tellers about the service offered to the crowds of the industry. Katzenberg revealed this weekend at the Produced By conference that Quibi would have two pricing levels when it was launched on April 6, 2020. The first one costs $ 4.99 with pre-roll advertising before each video segment – an advertisement of 10 seconds if the video is less than 5 minutes and a 15 second ad for 5-10 minutes videos. An ad-free option will cost $ 7.99.

"We have to have a quantity," Katzenberg said about investing in Quibi. "You can not take an episode of" Game of Thrones "and cut it into pieces, it's shit, it does not work.The only way to reach the volume is that everyone gets on board, goes up in the same boat and row in the same direction. "

And that's why, says Katzenberg, virtually every major media conglomerate is investing in Quibi.

In addition to Spielberg, Steven Soderbergh, Guillermo del Toro, Sam Raimi, Catherine Hardwick, Anna Kendrick, Doug Liman, Laurence Fishburne and Antoine Fuqua are among the talents already selected to produce for Quibi or for the lead role in his projects. The lively rate includes "Doomlands" from Look Mom! From Blue Ant Studios. Prods.

"The most qualified and talented people in the television industry today will be those who make Quibi a success," he said. "If we are right, it becomes a growth for the whole sector … If we succeed, we will have introduced this third generation of film narrative."

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