Is the premier place to be It's really important in every industry to have community.

This is where it begins, here at Serious Fest.

I think Hollywood is changing, but not fast enough.

We need the gatekeepers to open the door and series fest.

They're blasting the doors open and all eyes focused on the mile high city.

This weekend.

An ambitious and exciting new festival called Series Fest, an international television pilot festival uniting artists, television executives and producers to find the next big hit.

(music) Finally, there is an independent avenue for people who want to just go into the TV business.

(music) I'm Gemma chan.

It's such a great idea to have a festival dedicated to TV like this.

(music) First, we're going to kick it off with our third annual pitch a thon.

I love that you have pitch sessions here, because that is the one thing they don't teach you in film school.

They don't teach you in college.

And it turns out to be probably the most important function of creating a show and getting it on the air.

One of the reasons why we're here is to remind the filmmakers that are here, and they have an impact, and they make a difference.

I'm going to learn probably more than anybody else.

It was great to be here at Series Fest.

Series Fest.

What up?

Thank you so much.

It says Steve Carell on it, but let's see.

We can build a marketplace here, a place like series fests, the way that Sundance did in the early 90s with independent film.

I'm excited to be here as an artist performing tonight as they kick off the series fest (music) but this is the best audience to come out to in the entire world.

This is technically day two of series Who went out to Red rocks last night?

so it's so beautiful, you guys.

Some of my favorite memories are at the Red rocks, especially from Series Fest.

Nice to meet you.

I'm Claire Taylor.

I'm the chief programing officer here at series fest And welcome to the first official panel here at the Sie at the Sie Film Center.

Turn the mic on!

Or I can keep yelling because I was a musical theater major.

And you can do that, too.

I can also tap dance until any of these mics work.

Hello.

Can you guys hear me?

This is how we do it.

All right.

Oh, I found one.

I found one.

Okay, I got it.

Copy, copy.

All right, that's Randy Klein.

You guys, that's a boss.

She comes up here and she takes care of business.

Anyways, hi.

It's me, Claire Taylor, chief programing officer at Series Fest.

Welcome to season 11.

We're so excited to be here for a bold New ERA Reveries mission to elevate the LGBTQ content.

You guys, this is exciting on a number of levels.

One, you're going to get to hear a lot from the reverie team on how they're navigating the television industry.

But you're also going to get to hear from one of my favorite Series Fest alums, Kit Williamson, and about how he is approaching all of the amazing work that he's doing.

So first up, we are going to show you the trailer for his series unconventional, which will be streaming on reverie, and we world premiere date here at Series Fest last year.

So to give you guys some context, we've known Kit since he had his first show with us, East Siders, which was on Netflix.

He's an incredible talent or generous friend, and I'm so excited for you to hear from him and the reveire guys, as we ar exploring their new way as they're going through the streaming platforms.

I'm not going to tell you too much because we've also got a great moderator.

Anyways, let's roll this trailer for Unconventional.

All right.

A little one more housekeeping thing I want to do as a group is to give a round of applause to our volunteers, who are going to be fearlessly guiding us through this week.

Thank you.

Series Fest volunteers.

And also thank you to Bonfis Stanton Foundation for sponsoring this panel.

Okay, let's get to the main event.

Please join me in welcoming the absolutely wonderful Jeff Conway, Senior Contributor at Forbes Hollywood and Entertainment.

Thank you Claire.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you so much for coming out to series fest season 11.

Let's give it up for season 11.

Awesome panel.

Today I'm going to introduce our panelists.

The first one is Damian Pelletier.

Sony made sure I spelled that out for him.

Co-Founder and CEO of reverie.

Please give it up for Damian.

Chris Rodriguez, co-founder and CCO of reverie.

And Kit Williamson, star, writer, showrunner of Unconventional and East Siders, as well as Go Team Entertainment.

So everybody have a mic?

Yep.

Oh thank you.

So I have to share really quick.

First of all, we're all staying in the same hotel.

Shout out to Hotel Clio, and I get down to the gym this morning, and I haven't met these two gentlemen yet, so I'm.

I'm walking around and I'm like, hi, how are you?

We're all at the gym as the best thing ever.

We're all at the gym at the same time.

Priorities are there, like 8 a.m.

and Kit and John were there too.

Yes, yes, but congratulations to you all.

First on reverie, on everything with unconventional.

But if we can take a moment, obviously we got to see a quick blurb up here, but can you speak to the foundation of your projects and how they came into fruition?

Where we are today?

I Can Start Unconventional is a dark comedy about two eccentric queer siblings and their significant others trying to start an unconventional family in the California desert.

We started, working on the project back in 2018, before the pandemic developed it at the Sundance Lab, and then Cold Iron Pictures came on board to independently finance the first season.

We shot it right out of quarantine, had a 14 day Covid shutdown that turned into over a year, and then had a circuitous road to finishing the show, which we finally did thanks to having reverie come on board as a full creative partner in it.

Making the show reveries first original longform scripted series.

And we're so happy to be on an Lgbtq+ platform that really understands, what the show is really about.

I love that.

How about for reverie?

I know you started in 2015.

Am I right?

Yeah.

Wow.

That's crazy.

In many ways, it feels like we're really kind of coming into our own.

In no small part.

Thanks to Kit and your amazing project.

Reverie started as a passion project for us.

At the time, this was ten years ago.

Was before the streaming wars.

And we really wanted to create a platform that was formed by our community, but also something that entertained, reflected the broad swath of the LGBTQ community, which is more than one gender orientation.

We really believe the thing that that powered us forward was this belief that, queer as a culture.

And, we really were from the very beginning, trying to, put out the notion of queer joy.

So it's in our mission, actually, and even today, like everything that we do from a vendo r perspective, from a creative perspective, employee perspective, we always try to come from that mission of queer joy.

And Chris and I are only two of the co-founders, the other two equal co-founders, Leah Daniels and LaShawn McGee.

So we are actually 75% people of color founded, 50% women of color founded.

I am neurodivergent, an immigrant from Canada.

And I identify as non-binary.

But, you know, between the four of us, we are actually a certified minority owned and operated streaming network, one of the few that have now reached scale with over 8 million monthly active viewers.

That's amazing.

Congratulations.

That's super exciting.

So we're here to talk about LGBTQ plus content.

We got to see up there.

There's throuple talk.

Sometimes there's baby making wants.

It's very real authentic LGBTQ plus storytelling, which I love.

But how do you balance for all of you?

How do you balance being authentic and true to our community, but also knowing that this is still a business at the end of the day and you want to still get even heterosexual community to come in?

Yeah, I mean, I can jump in here because I, you know, like I was mentioning, the 8 million monthly active viewers are not necessarily all LGBTQ.

Reverie is a free streaming platform, meaning that there's no subscription, no barrier.

You can just start watching.

How we monetize is you have to watch our ads and we have great advertisers.

Big brands like L'Oreal and McDonald's and Lexus and huge, huge companies that, that understand the value of a $1.7 trillion a year disposable income.

That is the value of how much queer people in America spend a year where the third largest consumer group, first is white, second Hispanic, third is LGBTQ.

So that is an affluent group that doesn't matter what industry you're in, entertainment or otherwise, you need to be marketing or understanding or tapping.

And I think one of the biggest things for us is that we have really thought about from a holistic perspective, like how to keep that authentic for and by our community.

And again, coming from that place of queer joy, finding stories that are not just the coming out or the lesbians always die.

You know, the typical things that we always see in mainstream media, because it's very tone deaf to what the culture is.

Going back to what Chris is saying.

And so that is a perspective that we're always looking at.

And again, we can't qualify those 8 million monthly active viewers as all LGBTQ.

And we see that as a really positive thing.

Samsung and TCL and Vizio, all the places you find our network don't exclusively sell TVs to queer people.

And so what is really exciting is that we are tapping that elite audience.

They are seeing our culture represented by us, and they're able, whether it's an advertiser or a viewer, to really understand better, like how to communicate and live and normalize the queer experience.

Yeah, I would just echo that.

I think authenticity in storytelling is what people are drawn to, whether or not they identify as the characters.

I think that that's something the industry really has backwards.

They think that people will only identify with characters that match their personal identification.

Well, speaking from personal experience, my favorite shows do not actually center the white gay male experience.

Watch all kinds of different stories, and empathize with all kinds of different characters as long as they are real people.

I think that that's the key to unlocking a broader audience.

And I know from East Siders, that cis heterosexual women are actually big supporters of LGBTQ content as well, you know?

Thank you.

We're still working on you straight guys.

We're working on.

Yeah.

We'll get you at some point.

If you want to keep a girlfriend, maybe sit down and watch it.

You'll learn something.

So, Damien, Chris, Kit, you know, as our society evolves and our world leaders change, for better or worse, how do you adapt to the world where and.

But to make sure that we still make sure that voices that are marginalized are still heard.

So, I mean, that's a tricky one.

Well, I mean, here's the thing.

Right now, you know, we were all a little had a little trepidation about going into this new political environment.

And, you know, he's been around for ten years.

So we've been here before.

These are actually the moments when it's more important to be yourself, unfiltered.

It's also these moments where people are more receptive to hearing these different perspectives, which can kind of blend into the background, I think, when things are going, well, we've never had any issues being ourselves.

And this is kind of ironic, considering how we distribute.

And like Damien was saying, you know, we are a standalone streaming network.

You can download our app, you can go to our website.

But a lot of places where we're discovered are in these mainstream environments, like Pluto TV, which everyone may be aware of.

One of the cool things that I like about this is the access to different types of audience, young and old.

There's no barriers to entry, but also the fact that, like Damien saying the the viewership, is anyone, from different backgrounds.

So we have an opportunity.

You know, and this is a benefit to to from the fact that our name isn't necessarily hitting you over the head with the fact that it's queer.

This was by design, by the way.

But people can come upon our, our content.

And it's really when you see these stories about people who may not look like you, where it really starts to change hearts and minds.

So that's kind of the work that we've been doing from the very beginning a little bit.

Yeah.

I mean, thinking about it from, just a storytelling and creator perspective living through the last Trump administration, we saw a huge groundswell of support for, stories that centered marginalized communities.

And I think that there's a trepidation and quite frankly, some cowardice that's happening right now in the entertainment industry and with major corporations.

Look at target, look at the, you know, various other companies that have stepped away from Dei initiatives, which is just basically a code speak for go fuck yourself.

And we had a really robust conversation about this last year at Series Fest trying to broadcast, well, what's the what's the future going to look like in a post?

Dylan Mulvaney drinking a blood Bud Light and making conservatives lose their minds world.

And while the back backlash is real and ongoing, I think it's it's up to us to continue forging ahead and not quiet down and not silence or censor our shell ourselves and not succumb to, you know, art for the sake of respectability is never going to be very interesting.

So I think as long as you lead with authenticity.

I think you, hopefully, hopefully we're we're on the right course.

Yeah.

To piggyback off of that, and Damien, you brought up the great sponsors that referenced fortunately being.

Yes.

Yeah.

Which is great.

Yeah.

I have no doubt there has been hurdles and getting those sponsors.

So can you talk to me about the process of being sure that your work is treated the way it should be and competing with, what they call mainstream media?

Yeah.

Look, because we're not driven network, we rely on the, the advertisers to fund projects like unconventional or, Drag Latina or our new show King of Drag.

And and that's our model.

Our model is very different than traditional media.

We're not funding things for the sake of funding things.

We're funding things that we could go to advertisers and say, you want to be a part of this.

We want to integrate your brand into this in some way, or at least have your logo across it, because this is going to see a big audience on our platform.

We have data.

We have lots of information that will prove that like, hey, this is going to be very fruitful for you to underwrite projects.

We're not underwriting projects like Netflix and Hulu just yet.

We're still a venture backed startup.

There's only 40 of us that work at the network, actually, Alex Albright, our head of programing who's Denver based, is right here.

You'll meet her.

She'll be here at the festival tomorrow and I think maybe Friday.

And today, Alex has been with us for I got how many years now?

Like for almost three years and came from MTV.

At Viacom.

So we've got a really, really great staff.

But I think, you know, one of the biggest things is like, we here, look, I am not going to, I'm not going to go and say that like, I love Big Macs and I do support McDonald's because they're a big advertiser for us.

And I understand kind of the two sides to the coin where I think a lot of corporations and this is this, you know, one size doesn't fit all.

It's very different from any company had to when Trump got into office, they had to, look at their legal exposure, their legal risk in keeping DEI programs versus being quiet and kind of being behind the veil.

And I'll give you an example.

McDonald's is one of the platinum sponsors of World Pride in Washington, DC.

Yet we're all objecting to them at the end of this month because they took away their DEI practice.

So they're still spending money with our community.

They're they're investing in our community.

They're just not doing the same public way because they can't get they can't get sued if they do it this way versus that way.

And so I think, like, you really have to think about the two sides of the coin on, you know, some companies obviously a hobby lobbies and you know, chick fil A's or we're not ever asking for sponsorship dollars or even talking to you, but there are bigger companies that do still see us and do want to support us and support the art that we're doing.

But they've had to regress because of political potential backlash.

Obviously, this is not a fun time for anyone living in this country, because of everything that's going on.

But I always say, like, you know, now to Chris's point, like it's more important that we exist and we get louder and prouder because now it's a protest again.

It's not a party.

It's a protest.

That's what world pride in Washington, DC is going to be.

When 4 million people ascend on the mall and the city, and we're going to be one of them.

We have a float in the parade.

It's our first time actually doing a float.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's that's awesome.

Very cool.

So I know all of us in the room are professionals that are entrepreneurs in our own way.

We have to wear several hats.

I know you three have to wear several hats in the work that you do.

Can you speak to that about being a creative?

Maybe in 2025?

Fortunately, we have this great technology at our disposal.

That's a great thing.

But also can overwhelm us.

We have a lot of things that we do, and I think a lot of people oftentimes don't know that we're doing more than we're actually doing.

Yeah, I mean, I couldn't possibly be wearing more hats than I do on projects like this.

Unconventional, you know, creator, writer, director, showrunner, producer, actor, music supervisor.

What's it like doing contracts and working hand in hand with the PR team and creating the marketing assets, creative direction of the photoshoots?

I think that for the creators in this room, you have to take ownership of every single piece of your project.

Whether or not you would traditionally be in that lane or not.

Nobody's going to come do it for you, and nobody's going to care more than you about the end result.

And also, nobody knows your work better than you do and how it should be marketed or, positioned in the marketplace.

So I would just encourage everybody to throw aside any sort of imposter syndrome just because you haven't done it before, because this entire industry is filled with people who never did it before.

Yeah.

I'm curious on every side.

Yeah.

Chris, what made you want to go back?

You go.

I was going to say I'm like, look, one of the I. We've had a relationship.

I've known Kit for years.

This is our first project with him at reverie.

And the moment that Kit came to us with unconventional, I was like, oh my God, hands down, yes, we've got to figure this out.

And it took about a year to get it to fruition.

But it's one of those things where, like Kit is an entrepreneur by trade, it's different than the type of entrepreneur that I am and the, you know, tech and operational startup kind of side of things.

But you all have to have that mindset.

You cannot wear one hat anymore.

It just does not exist.

That world and that industry has faded away.

You have to think about being a media partner, quote unquote.

And what attracts me is not just the project and the amazing work that Kat does, but he is a hustler, right?

He is someone that, like, we can lean on and trust in any scenario because we know that he believes in what he's doing and we want to believe in him and give that back with the platform.

But I think you have to keep that mentality.

You have to think like you can't.

Long gone are the days where you can just be a writer.

You can just be an actor unless you're, you know, Charlize Theron or you know, Paul Feig, right?

It's very different.

But I think, like, you need to think of the mindset of, like, how are you building a startup with your project, with your production company, and how are you going to speak to networks like Ravelry, small or big to Hulu and Netflix?

And how are they going to perceive you and understand your work ethic?

Yeah, I mean, it's a combination of being fearless, like Kit.

And being humble is probably the wrong word.

But I think, you know, in many cases you're going you have to learn the business side as well, which can be very tricky.

Particularly when you're negotiating with networks or even smaller production companies.

I think if I could give any advice on that side, because I do interact with a lot of, younger, you know, well, filmmakers of all different ages, is, I think, the best, the best way to look at it is try to understand the perspective of who you're talking to.

Right.

And that could be a financier.

That could be, a network like us.

But I think the best way to kind of get a deal going, or at least get on the radar because like in many cases, we'll talk to folks that the project is not right for the platform.

But like Damien was saying, you kind of get that energy from them.

They're they, you know, do stuff on their own.

They can really make something work.

But the ones that really get it are the ones that like, look at reverie and are like, hey, and it's not just like researching, right?

It's like, hey, I understand what your business model is.

And like, like recently I had a filmmaker come to me with a project, he's like was trying to finance a second season, but, the project is really good, but it's a little racy for reverie.

And we are free.

Right.

And that's the one caveat with, having a free platform is we can't go too crazy on the racing is.

So rather than like in the middle of his pitch for season two, he kind of stopped and was like, you know what?

I think I'd rather pitch something else to you.

And that was more in line with what we needed.

And he saw that we had holes in our programing for like game shows.

And he started to pitch me that.

And I'm like, that is the right thing to do.

Like, you understand it and you don't have to sacrifice your, what you want to do, your authenticity.

It's just about adjusting.

And I think this is where the humbleness or like, kind of understanding the bigger picture can really get you through, through the door.

And I think like also just to kind of add like, don't, don't be afraid to ask questions rather than pitch first.

Right.

So the best producers that come talk to us are like, hey, what are you looking for?

Or when is your pitch cycle, right?

Like, we're not taking pitches right now until the summer.

And when we take them in the summer, it's for 2026 and 2027.

We're done for the year.

We're slated.

We do everything a year in advance.

That's our calendar, right?

So that's not the same calendar for everybody else.

But it's it is for the way that our business works also, you know, to Chris's point, because we're a free to consumer platform, there is no subscription, no credit card required.

You just turn it on to watch.

We have to be for all audiences, meaning we don't go past a TV.

PG 13 or 14 rating, right?

Even unconventional, the one that you see that's free, is the UN is the, edited version for television.

We do have a subscription service.

Shouldn't totally poopoo subscription.

We do have it.

But I always say it's like the person who is a super fan that buys a t shirt and wants to watch without advertising.

And so we have a small audience of subscribers that continues to grow.

Who wants to watch the unrated version of unconventional because they really enjoy the free version, and they were bleeps and blurs.

First they wanted to see more of kids backside, you know what I mean?

And the uncensored breastplate of Willam the drag queen, because even that had to get blurred out to be TV team.

That was like my favorite.

And well, I'm it's such a good sport on that.

But you know, so it's but understanding before you come to pitch us that that is the way our business works or that our model that we look like, that we look for first is, hey, how could we bring in advertisers?

Is this an advertiser friendly project?

Right.

Because we're talking to everybody, we have everyone from Nike to discover Card to elf to McDonald's to like L'Oreal.

We have so many different brands that we work with constantly that are literally funding.

We pass through almost 100% of the funding that we get, to the filmmaker to create the project.

And what is our budget ranges, right.

Our average budgets between, you know, 250 to 500,000, we're not up to the million.

Hopefully next year.

That's what our goal is to get to our first million dollar project.

But we're not doing 2 or $3 million projects.

You know, like a Netflix independent is so understanding.

Kind of like what the restrictions are for the platform and the audience that we're speaking to.

You know, that's another thing too, is I this is a little trick that I play sometimes with people who are pitching us.

What's your favorite reverie show?

You'd be surprised how many times people say, I haven't watched anything on reverie.

Why are you sitting in front of me and pitching me a project that you want me to underwrite when you don't even know what our content is or our audience is?

That is like one big, like, turn off for me.

So, you know, what is the target audience?

For us, it's millennial and Gen Z. It's people under the age of 45.

That's almost 85% of our audience.

So understanding that before you go and doing a research and development and not just blindly pitching anything is really important, I think this is also incredibly valuable advice.

And remembering from a creator's perspective that a pitch is a presentation, but it's also a conversation, right?

And sometimes that conversation happens with the general meeting prior to a pitch.

And sometimes that conversation happens with yourself and the information that you can find on the internet.

But don't be afraid to ask questions.

Definitely do your research.

And then, you know, have that kind of fluidity and flexibility to tailor what you're doing to the specific people that you're pitching.

Leading, Vanguard workshop with Canva on pitching later on this.

This series fest.

I hope you all will join us for that.

Because, yeah, you can also make a really cool pitch deck.

And actually, for people, we're going to be pitching, I think, Alex tomorrow.

Right?

Yeah.

She's taking pitches tomorrow.

Awesome.

So, Chris Damon, you guys spoke very highly about Kit and coming out with unconventional.

I'd like to reverse that for a moment, cause I know a lot of times you don't have these heart to heart moments.

So I want to say, Kit, you know, what does it mean?

I know you shop this around for a while.

Unconventional.

And then you found reverie.

So what does it mean to have found a home that supports you and vice versa?

It's incredibly meaningful, and I think it's been the perfect home for the show.

We couldn't ask for better partners, both in terms of the rollout, the press and marketing support.

And like I was alluding to earlier, just understanding the show and understanding our audience.

You know, there's a, a world in which, a show that is misunderstood by its, network or its distributor, isn't conveyed in the correct light and doesn't find an audience as a result of being marketed in the wrong way.

And so being able to, you know, be so collaborative, in that way, with the entire reverie team, and, you know, have it be something that, you know, everybody at that company understands because we're, we're in pursuit of the same goal.

So speaking of LGBTQ plus content, how are we?

I mean, as as a collective, as a world doing.

You know, what's great about storytelling of the LGBTQ plus community right now and what needs to be improved upon, in your opinion?

Chief Content Officer I mean, there's the book.

Okay, here's here's what I would say is there's actually a lot of really quality queer, programing out there.

I think the issue that you encounter is that when we're talking about mainstream platforms, the level of reach that these, that most of this queer centric programing is going to reach is never going to be enough for them.

And this is why, to Damien's point about like, yes, it was a cliche that lesbians would get killed off and all these things.

But in a similar way, it's a cliche that these very, very popular, queer shows that are embraced by the community are canceled after a couple of seasons.

I think a good example is somebody, somewhere, with Max, which, you know, me and Damien personally loved.

That was actually one of the ways we got connected with Murray Hill or we were connected before, but, it's it really just comes down to dollars and cents, and I think that's the problem.

And I love that mainstream networks embrace different perspectives or cultures or however you want to kind of, say it.

It's not they're not genres.

Or at least queer is in a genre.

But this is, I think, where we've been able to flourish, over this past ten years.

And granted, this was a build up, right?

It and I was telling Damon it took us, ten years to be an overnight sensation.

And I, I, I'm kind of joking about that, but, like, you know, during that time, that's kind of how we were able to survive, by really focusing on this community and allowing it to flourish and like, you know, stay put with these stories without having to cancel them and move on to something else.

You've heard of bury your Gays?

Well, it's now cancel your gays.

Like what Chris is alluding to.

And if you look at the glad media reports, for the last five years, we've seen a nosedive in representation with even fewer characters projected to return to television shows across network streaming and cable in the next year.

You saw a groundswell of support in the previous Trump administration, but most of that was developmental.

I think it's important to understand the the difference between development and acquisitions and the difference between greenlighting and developing a show.

Right.

Every queer storyteller that I know was working a lot in the previous Trump administration, because there was this sort of gold rush, this gay gold rush.

And prior to that, we had a lot of shows being greenlit because there were the Subscription wars and they were trying to appeal to quote unquote, niche demographics in order to get you to sign up.

And then they decided that they didn't value you in the same way.

Well, I say vote with your dollars, gays, theys, and girls, let's go.

If we're not welcome here, let's go places where we are and they may not listen to anything else, but they'll listen to dollars that always comes down to it.

I was gonna say, it's so funny.

It's like the way that you described that kid is perfect, and it's almost like they had clickbait, right?

With like, those shows that they would greenlight and then immediately cancel after a, like a second or third season, even though, case in point, like somebody somewhere won a Peabody Award and then they go and they cancel it.

I just don't understand.

We've been talking about the hurdles between revry and unconventional that have happened, being an up and coming video streamer and an up and coming show.

But I feel we don't talk about the blessings of being an up and comer.

You know, there's some creative liberties that you get and less of a leash that say, the Netflix some of Hulu's got.

Can you speak to the blessings that you have within your situation right now?

Yeah.

I mean, well, this is kind of why we started the network, actually.

It was because we, we saw an opportunity to create a true independent network, without gatekeepers.

And it was actually it was, and we told the story a bunch of times, but it was actually borne by the fact that, me and Damon are also married, by the way, we're two of the four co-founders, but we're married.

We've been together for 17 years, and, we're gonna write a novel about working with your partner.

Please come.

And.

Yeah, that could be really different.

You need lots of flair.

We'll be a rom com or a horror film.

We'll see.

Yeah, we'll see how the ending.

But this was in 2015, and I broke my, my iPhone, and, we were in Vegas and we went to the Apple store because back in the day, you would go to the Apple Store to get your phone fixed.

And it was when the new Apple TV came out and it was the fourth generation, and this was the first time that they allowed third party developers to develop apps.

Just the same way that they had previously allowed for your phone, because it used to be with Apple TV, that they would only come pre-installed with Netflix and Hulu, like the two majors at the time.

And I know that this maybe not everyone would have this idea, but from this, it was actually Damian's idea.

He immediately went like from third party developers Apple TV, you can make your own network, and we even went into it expecting someone had already developed something like reverie.

And if they hadn't and so it was really, really formed by this.

Like loosening the constraints of the, the gatekeepers, like I was saying.

And, you know, some of us worked for the gatekeepers at the time.

I was actually at MGM United Artists, and I was the production attorney for the show Shark Tank, which was like, could you could not be more corporate than that?

But it taught me a lot in terms of like the value of being free and independent.

Because, you know, it's like they say, be careful what you wish for.

That was like the best job I ever had, but I had no creative freedom.

And it was really it was suffocating.

So like and we all felt the same way.

We, me and my other three co-founders had similar experiences, particularly Alicia, who's also an attorney.

We actually met in law school, but it really was borne by that.

And so when we jumped into it, we were able to do it our way.

And, you know, and we didn't necessarily know what we were doing at the beginning, which is okay, like, you know, to make those mistakes.

But, but here we are now, so and also say just to say like another the I love that you said blessings because there's been I can count so many in making this company.

This was definitely a labor of love.

Like Chris said, we're celebrating our ten year anniversary this year.

And for the first time, like, you know, in a long time in a vision of, like an a sea of no's and, you know, closed doors from investors and closed doors from studios and networks and just a whole bunch of people who said, this will never, never work.

I always think of the Madonna quote, the most controversial thing that I've ever done is to stick around.

And so I feel like we're doing that right now.

It's my next tattoo, but one of the one of the biggest blessings for me.

And I tell this story a lot, but I think it's relevant for this.

This audience is when, in 2019, I was asked to keynote speaker at Kashish, the LGBTQ film festival in Mumbai in India, and I had made friends with them because I went to Sundance earlier that year.

And, and the executive director said, you should come.

And I'm like, I'm dying.

I always want to go to India.

This is so cool.

For contacts, they had only decriminalized being LGBTQ one year prior in 2018, and in 2017, only a year after recovery started.

Two years after we started, we had, licensed this lesbian Hindu English drama series called The Other Love Story that was, British producer Harini Dala, who produced in Bangalore.

And we saw this explosion of traffic from India, and we could only equate it to the one project.

So we didn't have anything else in and and in Hindi.

And so, when I was there at the festival for I want to experience the whole things, I want to experience the culture.

And it was really exciting.

And I went for the opening night, and it was a very, very moving kind of like ceremony and presentation.

And I was asked to go up and be like, oh, go plug your pitch like, hey, come see me, you know, Friday at 2:00.

And after at the reception, I had this lineup of lesbian queer filmmakers who wanted to come and talk to me and, like, introduce themselves or shake my hand or take a photo, Amma, like, why?

Like it just I couldn't figure out why are all these queer women wanting, like, I've never been to India?

This is day two for me.

Like, this is so wild.

And it wasn't until about the third or fourth, woman who said, you don't know why it's all these women wanting to talk to you.

And I'm like, no, I, I'm, I'm, I'm very I'm very excited.

And, you know, perplexed.

And they're like, it's because, I want to show you something.

She pulls out her phone and turns on her Tinder.

And it's women who love women is kind of the translation there.

And every like image as she was swiping was an image from the other love story.

So it's how queer women were identifying for fear of, like, discretion of losing their jobs or their families or being outed.

They were using images from the project that we had released as an original, to identify themselves as lesbian or queer female.

And I started crying.

I was like, oh my God, I can't believe that we are having this blessing, this impact on a part of the world that none of us have ever been to, let alone I wouldn't have been here had it not been asked to speak.

And I woke up Oliver and LaShawn like 15 hours earlier in L.A.

because the time difference, I'm like, guys, this is really fucking cool because we're seeing the impact of what we're doing on our culture and places in the world that we never thought that we'd even venture to.

So that is probably, for me, one of the greatest blessings I've had in creating this business.

That's beautiful.

Thanks for sharing, Kit.

How about for you know, when when people use my pictures on dating apps, it's not as heartwarming.

I dont get it.

bunch of catfish is out there of kit.

Wow.

You know, I think that unconventional in these settings before it are both shows that would not have been greenlit through the traditional development process.

I don't really think there's ambiguity about that, because there is a long line of queer showrunners and show creators who are way more successful than I am, who I'm sure would love to have a, you know, queer girls on the air.

Right.

I know that's probably the aspiration of many people in this room to have that sort of character study piece, an ensemble piece like that.

And there's a dearth of them on television.

Right.

So I think it is really up to us as individuals to not allow that to deter us and to continue to push forward with stories that we want to see told.

So we're going to open up to Q&A in a moment.

But before we do, we're also gonna have a surprise from reverie right after that as well.

But beyond that, can you speak to what's up ahead for reverie?

What can people expect?

What can people expect from your shows and your collaborations?

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm too conventional is killing it right now in our in the ratings, one of our top shows, being watched.

Super exciting.

Now it's fully available because we were doing weekly releases, so now you can marathon it.

Which is great.

You know, we have our award winning series, Drag Latina, hosted by Carmen Carrera.

And Phaedra, which is in English and Spanish, the only intersectional Hispanic drag competition series.

We really excited that we won that award in season two, which was really exciting.

So we're back in production for that the summer and release later on this winter.

We have our IBL, the International Vogue League.

So those who know Pose and Legendary, we've always been supporting the ballroom community for years.

I myself am a huge ballroom.

Spectator as they call it.

Lots of friends in that.

And we've had a couple of specials Pride Ball 23, Pride Ball 24, and Halloween Ball, hosted by DeShawn, Wesley, who is the host of legendary UN Max.

Also, our lead judges, Naomi Maldonado, who you recognize from, legendary and Max.

So we are actually just about to announce, probably publicly for the first time today, but World Pride Ball, we're actually the official Vogue ball at World Pride in DC.

Come if of you there.

It'll be Thursday, June 5th.

Tickets are free.

I'll give you my card, afterwards if you want to join us.

And by the way, just for those who don't know the IPL, it's queer sports.

Yes, this is the innovative thing that we did, right?

We we're not just filming balls.

I for anyone who's been to a Vote ballroom, a Vogue ballroom competition, we're actually we changed the format and we're, packaging them as queer sports, which is blowing everyone's mind.

It's 13 cameras with, like, actual sportscasters and replay a whole judges booth scorecards.

Referees.

Like, we basically, like, took the idea legendary was great, but they did it in a very different made for television format.

We made it like you're watching or Major League Baseball because these are real competition.

They're like $10,000 category.

It's $5,000 categories.

They're competing and it is very hard sport for the folks who, you know, no ballroom.

So it's one of my favorite shows that we make.

And so World Pride Ball will be on June 5th in D.C., and then we'll have the the Float right afterwards.

But after our Q&A, you probably read my shirt book, Drag Kings.

And some of you may have heard of our new show, King of Drag, the world's first drag king competition series hosted by Murray Hill.

Yeah.

Thank you.

We announced that we've been working on that for three years.

Actually, I am a you'll read this in my bio on my Instagram as well.

Besides being a ballroom spectator, I am a big drag king enthusiast.

I have a lot of friends who are drag kings.

Sometimes I self-identify as a drag queen.

And and it's the, you know, the spectrum of King artistry is just as big, if not bigger than queen artistry.

And so, when we announced this in variety with Mark Malcolm, the trending hashtag was finally within the drag king community, because 17 seasons of Drag Race and 14 international seasons are yet to cast a drag king.

To me, that's exciting because I'd love to be the first.

I'd love to be a disrupter of things.

And we developed this in-house and actually created the show with a bunch of drag king friends who are producing and our producers, The Silo.

We shot it in March.

We have the most amazing cast, besides Marie, which you'll see in a sneak peek trailer that technically I should not be showing.

So please turn off your cameras.

Do not share anything.

This is embargoed for any press in the room.

Because tomorrow we have the headline, in the trades, which will show this trailer.

So you'll see this come out.

But I wanted to show it at series fast because, I do think that one of our contestants is actually a king from, Denver, which you will not see in the trailer.

You're just going to see all our judges in the trailer.

So definitely if you are part of the King community, whatever city you're in, support the Kings because they're from all over the country, and it's going to be a really exciting six episodes that starts airing on June 20th.

And by the way, going back to what you were saying about being independent and having that freedom, we were pitching this to advertisers for three years and no one would touch it.

No one knew what a drag queen competition was.

I knew what a drag king was.

They didn't know what a drag queen was.

Mindblowing.

And we eventually got sick of it.

And we're like, no, we believe in this.

This is this is the time.

And we just did it ourselves.

So that was definitely a moment of that freedom.

And then in the last minute, I'm serious when I say like the week before, two weeks before we started production, Alf cosmetics came in and underwrote half the production.

That's amazing.

Right?

Because they our sales team was saying to all of our sponsor and I'm wearing elf, everything I'm wearing right now is elf.

I've got on there daily moisturizer with chronic acid and 30 days power to go the power up power serum.

I know the whole product line now.

But, you know, it's it's ironic because elf is a brand that pushes the limits and takes risks.

And one of the things that they, you know, we were really our sales team was pushing on them to like, you want to do this, you want to be the first.

This is going to be really big.

And they came in and they came in in a big way.

And all the Kings were super excited, and Murray and all of our guest judges, and we gave away so much makeup and you'll see it in throughout the entire show.

But you know, there are brands that will align with what we're doing.

And they didn't touch our creative at all.

There's like, cool, how do we how do you want to what do you want to do with us?

And we're like, let's drag kings.

It's easy.

Like we'll use the makeup.

But it was one of those things where like, don't be afraid of brands, and marketers and agencies because they are willing to listen to you when you align with the right, the right creative.

Yes.

Before we open up the Q&A and then we show, king of drag, I want to give Kit a minute to talk about, your side of everything ahead for yourself.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I have a couple of projects in development.

Have been working together as slate that I'm about to start announcing, again, not announce yet, but I'm, working on an adaptation of My best friend's New York Times best selling young adult novels.

Teen detective series.

I won't tell you anything more than that, but that's going to be announced in a week or so.

And writing, a couple of projects on the independent side as well.

And then there's also just kind of living out the full life cycle of a season of television.

Right?

We've gone through our release, we're now available to binge watch.

We're going to be coming to video on demand on other platforms and doing an international push.

So, you know, that's something that you see from Netflix to CBS.

So every, every single show has a bigger life and understanding kind of how many ways in which you can get your show out.

There is something that I think is a really important thing to wrap your head around as a creator.

And also, yeah, it's kind of take a really long time.

It's going to be a lot of work, but you're here for it and I'm here for it.

I'm excited.

So we want to open up to you all.

Do you have any questions?

Yes.

Right in the middle.

Yeah.

I, I feel like, you know, for a while, because of the gatekeepers, YouTubers came in and kind of filled in, the the void of queer content.

Right?

And when I talk to a lot of, younger people in the queer community, they've never seen or heard of series like, sort of feel good, the Bisexual, even, A League of Their Own reboot, which had like a big budget and, what are you guys doing to try to convert those younger viewers to be like, it's not like it used to be.

Like there's great content out there.

Yeah.

I mean, look, marketing is everything, right?

And I'll give you an example.

We have we do work with creators.

Tony talks very affluent black, queer creator from Atlanta came to us with his musical feature film that he created based on his character, Cassandra.

It was amazing.

Like we were like, no, this is great.

And Tony's got over 2.5 million followers between, you know, TikTok and Instagram.

Let's, let's take a risk on this and let's program it.

Let's see what happens.

And we did a whole premiere in Atlanta because he encouraged us to come do it in Atlanta, which was great.

The amount of attention that we've had on social with that project has converted people into watching things on right now.

Are they going to necessarily know A League of their Own or these legacy type media things?

Not necessarily, because that's it's generational, however.

And I'm like, Chris talked to this like he licenses legacy work from Warner Brothers and Lionsgate and BBC, and we recontextualize that for that younger demographic, or sometimes for the older demographic who were trying to just get to watch more of the content.

Yeah, it's, and I don't know, it's Alex's job, actually.

He's had a program say she's the only one at that.

And I don't know if this totally answers your question.

But, part of this is almost like, like Damian was saying, reeducating, the community and in our case, we do obviously focus on the queer community, but it's it's funny.

It's funny because, like, we're in our early 40s and, but like, oh, toxic filler.

Let's do it.

And the institutional memory, for a lot of our culture is really, really short.

So it's actually kind of, because I'm in this position, like, I'm the chief content officer, so I do a lot of the licensing, I do all the licensing, for our films.

And it's only relatively recently that, some of the major studios have opened up their libraries to us.

But the problem that I've encountered is that.

There actually isn't that much queer content that was made over the past 40 years.

It's actually very, vanishingly small amount.

Right?

So we have to be kind of creative in things that we, select.

But then the other aspect is a lot of people nowadays, the younger audiences, they don't necessarily know this content.

So I think the way that we bring in, these younger viewers is by having really strategic, creative, marketing, marketing stunts with influencers where they have it's it's like the partnership with Tony Talks.

You're not just paying some influencer who's dispassionate about whatever it is that you're selling.

Number one, it's queer.

So that tends to mean more to them.

But you work with someone who has, you know, something to prove.

Like Tony, it was his first movie, so of course he was really out there.

And then you use creative programing, which is, again, what Alex does to try to like, bring people in and then get them to stay, by.

And this is the same with unconventional a big part of the art, the artistry of running a primarily linear network, which linear is old to a lot of these, like the younger generation.

But it's actually I very much believe in it because it's really how you can, like, build a painting, like create a painting with different pieces of content, and, and, and the other advantage of that is you're introducing them to some of these older movies, like the one that always kind of baffles me is there is this movie called Drop Dead Gorgeous with Kirsten Dunst best, Allison Janney, yes, Allison Janney, smartest.

Christy Lee, yes, most smartest.

But the thing so here here is the funny thing about that.

So I had a friend who was asking, hey, what should we license for Reva?

And he's like, oh my God, that's an amazing movie.

And I actually didn't grow up on that movie.

It was in the early two.

No, I think it was like 1999.

Yeah.

So wow.

Okay.

I know it's super fan, super big huge go on.

But the funny thing is, so movies like that totally embraced by the queer community, there's this group of people who totally remember and love it, but no one else is asking for it.

So it was, it's held by Warner Brothers.

And I approached them.

I'm like, can I license this?

And then, like, sure, nobody wants it.

So I didn't pay exclusive, but we were the we have been for today.

We're the only streaming service.

You can't even rent it on Amazon and even rent it because people are just they're not thinking about that.

So it's about finding these tentpole like just being very creative with their programing.

And then again, building a rich tapestry where people can, discover newer stuff that you're drawing them towards.

Like when you watch unconventional on our live channel.

Right afterwards we'll go into like Party Down, which is an old series from Lionsgate or AB Fab, which we have from the BBC, which come on, everybody loves that fab.

Yeah.

So I think we have time for one more question.

And so I've been the bad guy to have to choose, so I'm not gonna be the bad guy.

Okay.

First big candidate.

It finds me while ago I was in San Francisco and they were having the voting on the emperor and emperors, and I love it.

I'm wondering if you guys have any word on if, the show and I'm drawing a blank, but, from Manhattan, the show.

You were just talking about somebody somewhere?

Yes.

Yeah.

Do you hear anything about anyone?

Wanted to bring that back at all?

So, I mean, I will tell you, we, I'm going to give it away, but you're going to see this in the show.

We we met Bridget and Jeff on the set of King of Drag.

We have a mini somebody Somewhere reunion.

Yeah, that's episode two.

So.

So they had a, they had a, a petition at South by this year, to petition the network with all the fans to try to bring that back, which we were very much a big supporter of.

But I as far as I know from all of them that we've talked to, that there is no rumblings yet of any of that.

And what I will say, that's sometimes even sadder with some of these projects.

And I could say this about like legendary, for instance, because we're really good friends with those producers.

And a lot of the folks on the show, they can get shelved because the tax write off is actually more than keeping it on the shelf to pay the revenues and the residuals that's on happening.

It was somebody, somewhere, but it happened with legendary and it's really sad because we don't want to be the clickbait and then the tax write off.

We want these stories to have a home and live for a long time.

Now, if I could wave or wand and come up with, you know, the licensing fee for somebody somewhere in a heartbeat, we would have that on our, on our platform.

Yeah, we could maybe if we could afford it.

But like but you're talking about subsequent seasons and developing it.

This is well here's what I will say about that.

Usually the the structure of these deals are even if you develop it externally, that you don't own it.

Right.

Like the Warner Brothers financed it, then they own it, and then they can decide what to do with it.

And it can suck sometimes, but that's not always the case.

And actually there is a growing trend of different sort of deals.

Was it, with the movie centers with, the 25 year deal?

Yes.

Ryan Coogler no, that is unheard of.

If you haven't heard in 25 years, he'll have the entire rights to this IP.

Revert back to him if there's more deals like that, which I encourage them there to be.

And if Warner Brothers did it, sure, why not?

Then we can.

We can be in a situation where we don't have to have these amazing stories, just, you know, reach dead ends.

And I think you have to really think creatively on your dealmaking.

Right.

Like it again.

Like, and, my opinion is throw out all the rules throughout everything the way that film and television has been made before in the past.

Think creatively uneven, the business behind the pitch like they did with this, with this project that is brilliant, that is so interesting.

And maybe that there's, there is a, a savings on both sides.

Right.

That then creates again its own kind of startup element, its own business entity, its own opportunity to thrive for both parties and to be able to have more ownership, but then not spend as much on either side, and not have, you know, give up more of the control for both sides.

So I think, you know, even with us, you know, with the stuff that we create, because our cycles are so quick, we haven't been able to figure out how to do script.

And like Kit had created, the project came to us, and then we licensed it.

So it's very different.

That's more traditional, kind of like indie TV making, but we're trying to figure out how to work with advertisers that underwrite our content, but get they want things turned around, like from idea to distribution with six months or less.

How could we do that with scripted?

There is, I see people shaking their heads, but there is a model.

The difference is it's not just up to us to figure it out, it's both sides to figure it out.

We've got to get creative and again, throw out the rules, throw out everything you've been taught.

So for folks who are shaking their heads, there is a way to do it.

You just got to open your mind to think about if that's new way that television is going, and that's the way it's going to be created.

Now, how could I create something that fits that model and that where we can work together on building an opportunity?

Love that.

So before we go, we have the world premiere reverie exclusive, embargoed.

Look, no phones, no phones, please take up drag.

Woo!

Well, Damien, Chris and Kit, thank you for being with us today.

Can you please give them a round of applause?

Thank you.

Yes.

And thank you all for coming.

Whether you identify as LGBTQ plus or not, we appreciate you being here.

Thank you to Claire Randy and series Fest for also champion our stories.

Enjoy the rest of Series Fest.

Thank you again for coming.