Short-video streaming service Quibi backed by Hollywood, but would you pay for it?

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LAS VEGAS — A new short-video streaming service called Quibi has raised at least $1 billion from major Hollywood studios. But can they get your $5?

Quibi is “the next big thing” in entertainment, according to its founder, former Disney studios chief and DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, who announced further details about the streaming service during a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

Katzenberg believes the world of entertainment is moving onto the smartphone, but that world was not made expressly for the smartphone and, therefore, has some limitations. Cinematic masterpieces designed for the big screen (or even your TV screen) don’t come across the way they were intended when you’re watching them on your smartphone.

The company hopes to tailor entertainment to the way people — especially younger people — watch it. Quibi has made “quick bites,” or short videos for those moments on-the-go when you don’t have time to watch a full TV episode but want something better to do than scroll aimlessly through your social media feed.

“The idea (for Quibi) actually first occurred to me not in film, but in literature,” Katzenberg said.

He explained that while Dan Brown’s best-selling novel “The Da Vinci Code” was over 400 pages long, the chapters were only about five pages each. Readers could quickly make it through a chapter or two in the time they had. No reader wants to stop in the middle of a chapter, and no viewer wants to stop in the middle of a movie or TV show, he said.

The videos are about 10 minutes long and filmed at cinema-level quality — all with the assumption that you’ll be watching them on your phone.

The service, which will launch April 6, will charge $5 a month with ads or $8 for no ads.

Quibi will also pioneer a unique streaming form called “Turnstyle,” which essentially allows you to seamlessly switch between holding your phone in landscape mode and holding your phone in portrait mode. The picture will simply optimize itself to the way you’re holding your phone and remain full-screen.

Filmmakers send Quibi two versions of each video: one in portrait, and one in landscape. Quibi stitches the versions together and the video automatically switches to the appropriate mode when you shift your phone.

The company has also partnered with creators to film content explicitly for Turnstyle and to play with its possibilities. A short horror video that will debut on the site features a young woman who sees something strange on her Nest doorbell camera. If you hold your phone in landscape mode, you can see the cinematic action and what the young woman is doing. If you turn your phone to portrait mode, you can see what she sees on her phone: the man with a mysterious package on the nest camera and her father’s texts.

It remains to be seen, however, whether viewers will appreciate this new format enough to make the videos popular in a sustainable way.

But Quibi does offer filmmakers creative possibilities unavailable on platforms not formatted for mobile. Steven Spielberg has partnered with Quibi to create a horror show that can only be viewed when it's dark outside. Since your phone knows where you are and what time it is at your location, the show will appear on the app when the sun’s down, then disappear when it rises.

When it launches, Quibi will have 175 new, original shows and 8,500 episodes. The shows are backed and created by up-and-coming filmmakers, as well as hundreds of stars. Actress Reese Witherspoon and director Guillermo del Toro, among other Hollywood stars, appeared in a promotional video during the keynote.

Model, chef, author and Twitter-aficionado Chrissy Teigen will star in her own Quibi show where she plays a modern-day Judge Judy with a tagline that “no claim is too small.” After tweeting about her involvement in the show, she received over 3,000 claim submissions within the first 24 hours, Katzenberg said.

Though Quibi has received a lot of financial support from major studios (as well as significant partnerships with the likes of T-Mobile and Pepsi), the question remains: Will people pay for this?

Smartphone users (especially the Gen Zers) are immersed in a world of free, short entertainment designed for the smartphone, like TikTok or Facebook Watch. The service is also launching at a time when every media company under the sun seems to be coming out with its own streaming service, including NBCUniversal's Peacock, which also received time in the sun at CES.

But Quibi has already sold out its $150 million of first-year advertising and recently closed another financing round of $400 million.

To most industry analysts, it’s a huge gamble — one that will pay off enormously and create a revolution in entertainment and its technology — or be a complete bust.

The full keynote can be viewed here.