With investment from HBO, Funny or Die moves beyond online video
Hollywood creators may be increasingly interested in VC money, but they’re happy to accept old-media dollars, too. Take Funny or Die, the Sequoia-backed online video site started by actor Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay, which just sold an equity stake to HBO.
The size of the deal hasn’t been disclosed, but Variety reports that HBO’s stake is less than 10 percent. In exchange, HBO gets 10 half-hour programs from the Funny or Die team, which also includes Knocked Up director Judd Apatow. Possible joint efforts for the future include live tours and a block of Funny or Die programming on HBO.
Interestingly, in all the praise for Funny or Die’s brand and voice, neither company says much about HBO involvement in the site itself; in fact, the site seems almost incidental to the deal. This is really about the talent, not the site — recruiting high-profile names like Ferrell and Apatow must be pretty tempting for HBO, even if FunnyorDie.com never shows a profit.
So the news doesn’t necessarily dampen our earlier skepticism about Funny or Die’s business plan, at least when it comes to making money from online videos. That may not be a problem for the startup, since it’s moving beyond the web. Similar sites, however, will probably find that’s a hard path to follow, especially if you don’t have a movie star on your founding team.
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About the Author, Anthony Ha
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.