Lionsgate and Comic-Con International have teamed up to launch a subscription video-on-demand service for comic fans and other pop culture enthusiasts.
The aim is to turn Comic-Con International, which drew 130,000 fans to San Diego last year and attention across the Internet, into a year-round experience for fans with programming from Lionsgate’s library of 16,000 films, said Peter Levin, the president of Lionsgate Interactive Ventures and Games, in an interview with VentureBeat. It also gives Lionsgate its third video service, a growing segment in media.
He thinks the fit is great because Lionsgate makes films like Divergent and The Hunger Games, which have struck a chord with the kind of enthusiasts that make the trek to the 45-year-old Comic-Con event. Levin is a speaker at our upcoming GamesBeat Summit on May 5-May 6 in Sausalito, Calif.
The new service launches in the fall, and it is the company’s third targeted video-on-demand service. It also has Lionsgate Entertainment World, a general-entertainment video-on-demand service with Alibaba in China; and Shortlist, an indie film channel with the Tribeca Film Festival.
“This is a growing genre, ” Levin said. “We’ll get very aggressive with getting social hooks into this community. On the larger video services, discovering the right content can be difficult. We’ll offer a broad swatch of short form and long form video for this targeted community.”
In a previous job at Nerdist Industries, Levin organized the “Course of the Force” event where runners carried a lightsaber, Olympics torch style, to the Comic-Con event.
“There’s no bigger brand in this space than Comic-Con,” he said. “I’ve been going to it for 23 years, and it’s grown so much.”
As part of the new channel, the companies will make the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival (CCI-IFF) into a 365-day-a-year online event. Badges for this year’s Comic-Con sold out in 17 minutes.