Digital content's ability to disrupt traditional entertainment models will get an interesting and significant test later this month, as The Fun Group's latest production Laid In America premieres on digital download in the U.K. on September 26 and in the U.S. on September 27. The film will have its Blu-ray/DVD release the same day in the U.K., with North American discs hitting shelves on October 4. Unlike most pictures that get released directly to the home entertainment market, this one follows a particular model that looks at content and distribution from an entirely new perspective.
Image courtesy of The Fun Group
Laid In America is a comedy about two foreign exchange students trying to have sex on their final night in the USA after graduating high school, starring two popular YouTube personalities -- rapper/comedian/actor KSI and vlogger/actor Caspar Lee. By popular, I mean Taylor Swift has 20 million subscribers and KSI has 14.4 million, making his the 21st most-subscribed YouTube channel. He also has 2.8 billion total views on his videos. That's not a typo, I said "billion." Lee meanwhile has 6.5 million subscribers and more than 650 million views. Their combined total views, then, are more than 3.4 billion. That's equivalent to almost half the people on Earth each watching one of their videos.
Releasing direct to digital and Blu-ray/DVD, Laid In America assembles a host of other popular online stars -- including Josh Leyva, Deji Olatunji, Bart Baker, and Timothy Delaghetto -- with a combined following of tens of millions of their own subscribers. Leveraging the fans of KSI, Lee, and the rest of the cast of personalities into a loyal audience willing to rent or buy Laid In America when it releases digitally and/or on Blu-ray/DVD would result in enormous and unprecedented success for this sort of home market release. Consider, every 1% of their fans who purchase the movie could result in as much as $5 million in revenue. Then of course there are all the viewers who aren't subscribers and who might not be instantly familiar with KSI or Lee, but who like to rent or buy comedies to watch at home.
Direct-to-video/streaming is not a new model per se, of course. But what Laid In America is doing within that general model is potentially groundbreaking if it succeeds. This approach to film distribution is part of a trend of disruptive technology and platforms changing the way a new generation of audiences consume entertainment content. The old model of putting movies out and marketing them along traditional lines doesn’t apply within this new model, where studios and producers create the impression of a theatrical "event" release for digital content.
In the case of Laid In America, that event-like status is made possible because of the film's YouTube stars and their friends across an array of social media platforms. A digital premiere becomes like a worldwide release, as fans and viewers can participate online, while fan channels and sites can get access to affiliate links allowing them to participate in the premiere coverage.
Image courtesy of The Fun Group
So, a worldwide social media fanbase shows up like it's opening night at the theater. At least, that's the theory. But the combination of genre, popular stars, the disruptive technology involved, and trends in viewing patterns among the target demographics all suggest the theory will be proven correct. KSI's most-watched video --for his song Lamborghini, featuring P Money -- has more than 52 million views. Lee's most-watched video -- titled "Girlfriend Pranks My Roommate" -- has more than 18.6 million views. Laid In America would love to tap into that sort of viewer interest, as even 10% of those viewers buying the film would result in enormous success.
Distributors can save a lot of money with this new approach because the product itself is the marketing and the stars are the promotion. We're almost talking about immense monetization of the existing YouTube model itself, in a way, because the idea is to create lower-budgeted, personality-branded entertainment content delivered digitally straight to the target audience via mobile devices and streaming services, relying heavily on the built-in online fanbase for the personalities. It's like a subversive resurrection of the old-school Hollywood movie star concept, where projects were built around popular personalities to capitalize on their public personas in specifically targeted genre entertainment. These YouTube stars and other online personalities are their own personal brand, and they function much the way Hollywood movie stardom used to work for selling productions to the public, it's simply taking place within the latest emerging technologies and platforms, that's all.
Image courtesy of The Fun Group
Crucial to this approach is the young target demographic, and not simply for the traditional reasons producers and studios seek those particular viewers. Millennials represent more than one-third of those between the ages of 14 and 66, and 56% of television series and film viewing by Millennials aged 14-24 is on computer, smartphone, tablet, or a gaming device. This trend toward consuming entertainment via a wide variety of devices, to gain easy access to preferred content wherever they are at a given moment. This younger demographic is happy to watch movies on their phones, while older viewers find mobile viewing of movies and television far less appealing.
This change in how young audiences view content has an added bonus affect beneficial to this new distribution model, too. In the past, audiences -- including young people -- would perceive VOD, and direct-to-video/DVD/Blu-ray as a sign of low quality (an unfair bias, as many indie distributors will tell you). Nowadays, Millennials are used to seeing high-quality content online, so there's no longer a negative connotation related to direct home release. It's more important to younger viewers to have access to the content they want, when they want it, on the devices and platforms they most frequently use. Indeed, young audiences often perceive digital content as superior to theatrical content in many ways, as they prioritize access and mobility over sitting silently in a dark room with strangers for two hours in order to consume content.
Image courtesy of The Fun Group
So old distribution models simply don't appeal to younger Millennials the same way for all content anymore, as they are at once more open to utilizing the most convenient means of viewing while also being more discerning in their appreciation of the best means of consumption for a particular piece of content. Likewise, these viewers also are far more receptive to marketing and promotion via online and mobile platforms, which happens to be far cheaper and reaps larger relative payoffs.
Part of the advantage of such marketing is that it not only reaches the target audience of youth, it also reaches demographics who over index on mobile devices and social media -- Latino and African-American viewers, for example. As the biggest and fastest-growing minority group in this country, Latinos are the most movie-watching demographic in the USA as well, comprising 18% of the total population but more than 25% of all tickets sold. So a film relying primarily on new media marketing and social media promotion has a great deal of potential for cross-pollination of demographics capable of propelling a property to success. And Laid In America benefits from a diverse cast, so the more the marketing demonstrates that diversity, the better.
Digital sales and rentals saw an 18% increase in revenue last year, with electronic sell-through (EST) and video on demand (VOD) combining for more than $2 billion. Besides the power of digital content, Blu-ray and DVD sales and rentals are actually still strong and provide good profit margins, generating more than $9 billion in revenue last year despite dips in both sales and rentals. For the emerging distribution model we're talking about, these numbers are encouraging. A film like Laid In America might not have a large enough footprint to get younger audiences -- the viewers it has to attract in order to be successful -- into theaters. The cost of a theatrical release and necessary marketing campaign would be prohibitive, and there’s frankly no point in a theatrical release if they can’t go "big" with it anyway.
The gamble is that younger viewers who have time to watch YouTube on their mobile devices throughout the day will be willing to pay for feature-quality content branded with personalities they like. And obviously, having the Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Content Group logo -- they are distributing in the U.S., U.K., Latin America, and Ireland -- helps increase Laid In America's appeal and gets it onto Comcast and Time-Warner Cable, and onto shelves at Walmart and other stores.
Image courtesy of The Fun Group
Laid in America is a sort of "perfect storm" unifying all of these concepts. It could be a big opportunity to convince studios and producers of the full potential and value of this type of content production, these types of stars, and this distribution method. In a little over two weeks, we'll find out for sure.
Follow me on Twitter, on Google+, and on Quora. Read my blog. Listen to my new Popular Opinion Podcast (POP) with Sean Gerber.
