Quibi is Shutting Down
by EG
It seems the only people who didn't realize that Quibi was a bad idea were the company's founders (and the investors who gave them almost $2 billion). But now what everyone else knew would happen is coming to pass. This week, the company's founders announced that Quibi is shutting down after only six months of operation. Read on for details.
After raising nearly $2 billion in funding and promising to reinvent the way people consume entertainment programming, Quibi is shutting down, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal,
Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman's short-form video startup began informing investors of the move on Wednesday, per WSJ, capping off a six-month struggle to attract subscribers to Quibi's slate of mobile-first shows.
A source tells THR that a town hall with employees has been scheduled for later this afternoon, in which they will learn more about the fate of the business that they helped to build from scratch.
A Quibi spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Quibi has been evaluating its options for the last several weeks, including a possible sale. That the company is choosing to shutdown despite still having hundreds of millions in the bank indicates that that Katzenberg and Whitman see few long-term solutions for the business.
Katzenberg had been dreaming up the idea that turned into Quibi for several years. After he sold DreamWorks Animation to NBCUniversal in 2016, he set about putting the pieces in place to launch a mobile-first video business. He tapped Whitman to lead the business as CEO and together the duo raised $1 billion in funding from a cadre of investors that included every major Hollywood studio.
His plan was to lure subscribers with premium shortform stories that could only be watched on a mobile phone, and he quickly signed on filmmakers including Antoine Fuqua, Sam Raimi, Guillermo Del Toro and Catherine Hardwicke to make projects for the service.
But Quibi's April launch was derailed by the early days of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which forced people to stay home and and made it harder for the company to sell them on paying $5 per month for programming meant to be watched on the go.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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