Jeffrey Katzenberg Bets on Quibi and Cinema’s Smallest Screen
Jeffrey Katzenberg talks to Husam Sam Asi about Quibi, his ambitious bet on Hollywood storytelling for the smartphone generation.
In cinema’s earliest days, at the end of the nineteenth century, films were short sequences viewed through a peephole in the Kinetoscope, developed in Thomas Edison’s laboratory. The Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe then brought moving pictures to a large screen before a collective audience in 1895. Hollywood gradually developed feature-length storytelling and later embraced Cinerama, CinemaScope and IMAX to enlarge the image, answering the challenges of television and home video with the promise that bigger was better.
Now one of Hollywood’s giants, Jeffrey Katzenberg, has launched a streaming platform that moves in the opposite direction. Quibi offers short scripted and unscripted film and television productions, with episodes lasting no more than ten minutes, on the smallest screen: the mobile phone. The scale of the image recalls cinema’s beginnings.
A third generation of storytelling
Speaking to me over Skype, Katzenberg argued that screen size is not the point. He approaches Quibi as a storyteller. The first generation of cinematic storytelling, he explained, consisted of roughly two-hour films watched in one sitting. Television brought a second generation, with much longer stories told across 13 or 26 hour-long episodes.
Quibi, he believes, represents a third generation. Some two billion people carry what amounts to a portable television every day. The opportunity is to combine the scope of a two-hour story with chapters lasting six to ten minutes, which viewers can watch quickly on a mobile device during the spare moments of their day.
To make that possible, Quibi has developed Turnstyle technology, which automatically presents the picture in landscape or portrait format as the viewer turns the phone.
Launching during the coronavirus crisis, however, has exposed a weakness in the proposition. People are spending more time at home in front of their televisions, yet Quibi’s programmes cannot currently be watched on a television screen.
Katzenberg said television viewing would come at some point, but his priority was to create something beautiful specifically for the phone and make that the primary, best experience. Television already offers a wealth of entertainment, he argued. Why should the device that accompanies people for so much of the day not have something designed especially for it—even during this crisis?
A crowded market—and free competition
Streaming has become an increasingly crowded field as the major studios launch their own services to challenge Netflix, whose global paid subscriber base has reached roughly 183 million. Disney+ launched last year and has already passed 50 million subscribers. Apple has introduced Apple TV+, while Amazon is another established competitor. WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal are also bringing HBO Max and Peacock to market.
Restricting Quibi to mobile devices is Katzenberg’s way of avoiding a direct battle with those giants. Instead, he has persuaded major entertainment companies to support Quibi and participate in producing its programmes.
Its fiercest competition may nevertheless come from social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok. They attract billions of users and offer vast quantities of short videos free of charge, whereas Quibi’s basic subscription costs about $5 a month.
Katzenberg told me he enjoys social media and admires the ingenuity of those services, but sees his venture as something different. He has spent his career telling stories in Hollywood. His ambition is to bring its most talented storytellers and filmmakers, on both sides of the camera, to high-quality narrative work made for the phone with new technology.
Much social media video is made at home with modest resources, while a minute of Quibi programming can cost as much as $100,000. That level of spending makes the venture a substantial gamble.
Yet when Katzenberg began raising money, Hollywood studios, Wall Street institutions and Silicon Valley technology companies rushed to support him. He secured approximately $1.8 billion, more than he had originally sought. Their confidence rests on Katzenberg himself as much as on the untested idea of Quibi.
The man behind the gamble
Katzenberg rose through the ranks at Paramount, becoming president of production at the age of 29. During his time there he helped bring Star Trek to the cinema, with the first film released in 1979.
In 1984 he took charge of Disney’s film operations at a time when the company badly needed a revival. He helped turn its fortunes around, overseeing hits such as Good Morning, Vietnam and popular television programmes including The Golden Girls. Under his leadership, Disney also produced some of its most successful animated films, among them The Lion King, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.
In 1994 he founded DreamWorks with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, taking responsibility for animation. He oversaw films including The Prince of Egypt, Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon. DreamWorks Animation was sold to NBCUniversal in 2016 in a deal valued at approximately $3.8 billion.
It is hardly surprising, then, that investors opened their chequebooks when he asked for their backing.
His enthusiasm also draws talent. Hollywood stars and filmmakers have flocked to Quibi projects, including Jennifer Lopez, Reese Witherspoon, Liam Hemsworth, Guillermo del Toro and Spielberg. Some have expressed reservations about streaming and its implications for the big-screen experience.
Spielberg, in particular, has been a prominent voice in the debate over whether Netflix films should compete for Oscars on the same terms as theatrical releases.
Katzenberg’s response was that Spielberg, like other Hollywood filmmakers, is also an entrepreneur. A new approach to storytelling and a new set of tools offer an entrepreneurial opportunity, and that prospect has excited the people involved.
Launching into lockdown
New technology has provided a lifeline for Hollywood and the film industry during the coronavirus pandemic, enabling films to reach audiences through streaming services after cinemas closed.
But those services still need content. That presents a particular problem for Quibi because the crisis has also halted production. Established studio-backed platforms can draw on libraries containing thousands of films; a new service built around original programmes has no comparable reserve.
The challenges of launching during the pandemic have led Quibi to offer a free introductory trial, encouraging viewers to try the service while spending most of their time at home.
Katzenberg, who is 69, acknowledged that Quibi was designed for quick viewing during spare moments. Even when everyone is confined to their homes, he argued, those moments still exist: between sessions helping children with schoolwork, telephone calls, or meetings on Skype and Zoom.
He pointed to figures suggesting that mobile video viewing in March was 60 per cent higher than a year earlier. People, he maintained, are spending more time on their phones, not less.
Quibi’s future is as uncertain as cinema’s future after the coronavirus crisis. Will it follow other short-form platforms that failed to survive despite the backing of companies as large as Verizon and HBO? Or will Katzenberg once again defy the odds, reinventing pay television and reviving short-form cinema for a new generation?
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