‘Fred: The Movie’ Marks a Milestone for Media Convergence

3 Sep, 2010 By: Daniel Xu

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Varsity Pictures president Brian Robbins is confident that Fred: The Movie, debuting on Nickelodeon Sept. 18, will do well. When the film was pre-screened with 300 children — one of Hollywood’s tried-and-true research methods — it “played like a rocket.”

But perhaps even more assuring of the movie’s success is its leading character’s well established fan-base: Fred, the hyperactive teenager created by 16-year-old actor Lucas Cruikshank, is the star of his own YouTube channel, boasting more than half a billion total views and nearly 2 million subscribers. With hopes of establishing a franchise, Fred: The Movie also has the support of Lionsgate, which will oversee the movie’s DVD release Oct. 5 (prebook Sept. 8) at $19.98.

“[YouTube] is definitely a very powerful tool for young and undiscovered talent, filmmakers and artists to get exposure,” Robbins said. “And what started out as maybe sharing something with your friends is now capturing Hollywood.”

YouTube spokesman Chris Dale points to the democratic nature of the online platform and the tools the video-sharing powerhouse offers its content partners as part of what has led to Fred’s upcoming movie debut.

“There’s a chance that without his success on YouTube, more traditional media wouldn’t look twice at [Fred],” Dale said.

Indeed, even with the YouTube channel’s remarkable popularity, Robbins was at first unsure of which form — be it a movie or even TV series — that would best fit Fred’s crossover to traditional media. Fortunately for Fred, two of his young fans happened to be Robbins’ 10- and 12-year-old sons. When Robbins asked them whether they’d be interested to see Fred in a movie, the two boys jumped at the chance.

Dale describes this blurring of the line between traditional and new media as the materialization of media and technological convergence: Cameras used to make such popular TV shows such as “House” are available to average consumers, and research tools previously only available to entertainment elites can now be accessed by YouTube users to monitor their uploaded videos and the demographic and geographic information of their viewers.

Still, none of these technical wonders would alone be enough to intrigue an entertainment veteran such as Robbins without the content’s own value. At the end of the day, Robbins said he just enjoyed Fred the character.

“People on YouTube may not have the resources of the big Hollywood production companies, so it’s really just about the originality of the artist shining through,” Robbins said. “Fred is just funny for the kids. It’s a combination of his voice and the way he speaks to the camera in a Ferris Bueller way.”

Robbins said the movie aims to “stay true to Fred’s format” and expand on it by bringing to the screen characters Fred only talked about on the YouTube channel.

Lionsgate Home Entertainment SVP of marketing Michael Rathauser said the project aligns with the studio’s outlook.

“[Online] has become integrated as one of the opportunities that we have in terms of identifying potential releases, content and talent,” Rathauser said, citing Lionsgate Incubator, a project the studio has launched in order to seek out gifted filmmakers on the Web and help them produce and promote shorts.

And amid high-pitched shrills and trumpeting clangs of slapstick humor, Fred: The Movie may be closely watched by industry professionals as one of the pioneers that may begin to reshape the boundaries between contents that are so-called premium and user-generated, mainstream and niche.

Dale, however, sees that Fred’s audience will eventually have the last word.

“The future of entertainment consumption is not going to be about online videos or offline videos, and it’s not going to be a thousand channels or even a million channels,” he said. “It’s going to be a channel of one, and that’s the channel of you, and it’s going to be available across multiple devices.”

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