(Image courtesy of Tubi)
Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez first made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival with El Mariachi, the 1992 action-thriller he famously constructed from a mere $7,000 budget. Flash forward to this year’s Sundance, where Rodriguez and ad-supported streamer Tubi announced a deal today to stream online another $7,000 Rodriguez film, Red 11, and a related docu-series showing budding filmmakers how to make their own bargain-price masterpieces.
“These are both dream projects of mine, an entertaining culmination of ideas and ruminations on the creative process that also highlight the heightened sense of spirituality that comes from dancing with creativity when there is an absence of the usual financial resources,” Rodriguez said in a release. “In other words, ‘low budg fun.’”
One-sheet poster for Robert Rodriguez' "Red 11" feature.
Both Red 11 and the Robert Rodriguez Film School will run for free beginning this summer on Tubi, an ad-supported video-on-demand service that claims 20,000 entertainment titles, in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Before appearing on Tubi, the film will premiere at South By Southwest (the “home” festival for Austin-based Rodriguez) and receive an official screening in the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight.
The Film School is a series of videos about “truly actionable methods using my no-crew, micro-budget filmmaking style that will inspire others to make their own films and have their voices be heard,” Rodriguez said.
Tubi’s Chief Content Officer Adam Lewinson said in an interview in Park City, Utah that both projects will be available free on the AVOD service this summer.
The film itself is inspired by the experiences Rodriguez went through in a medical research facility in Texas while he was trying to earn enough money to make El Mariachi. Lewinson called it a film with “a thriller, sci-fi bent.”
Tubi’s first official presence at Sundance included the Rodriguez deal, a panel on low-budget filmmaking called “They Stream Indies, Don’t They?” and an evening party, Lewinson said. Tubi representatives are spreading out at various Sundance screenings, looking for other potential content deals during the indie sector’s most celebrated gathering. The festival ends this weekend.
“We’ve been doing indie film deals for years under the radar,” Lewinson said.
That approach contrasts with the subscription VOD services, which have used splashy deals at Sundance as much for marketing the service as for securing more content for their libraries.
Last year, Amazon spent a reported $45 million acquiring rights to films such as the Mindy Kaling/Emma Thompson comedy Late Night. This year, dealmaking at Sundance has been notably more subdued through the festival’s first five days, though Amazon has made a couple of purchases, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Like the subscription services, Tubi relies on indie film content from festivals and elsewhere to fill out its offerings. Lewinson said offering free access as the ad-supported service does makes it much easier for viewers to sample a wide range of lesser-known shows with little downside.
This year, the company is looking to enhance its offerings in Spanish-language and anime content, Lewinson said. Tubi already has a section focused on African-American cinema that is among its most popular niches.
“I like to say Tubi exists to super-serve the underserved,” Lewinson said. “I feel like we’re uniquely positioned for indie film. This is where we use content personalization. The knock about indie content is that it’s niche, it’s hard to monetize. Theatrical releases are built for scale.”
By contrast, Tubi claims 20 million monthly active users, an audience big and diverse enough for the service to carve out sufficient audiences for even the most niche of movies.
Tubi also recently announced a partnership with TV Azteca to launch in Mexico, and with Hisense, the world’s No. 6 TV maker, for prime position on its connected TV screens. The company also celebrated the one-year anniversary of its deal with Comcast’s xFinity video platform, the first of the AVOD services to be featured there.
Comcast recently announced the launch of its own Peacock streaming service, a hybrid AVOD/SVOD approach that Lewinson said would pair well with Tubi, given Peacock’s partial emphasis on news, sports and other live content.
