The $2.7b gamble: Quibi could be the costliest flop in history

Chances are you've never heard of Quibi. Even if you're young and hip with a finger raised to the wind for the zeitgeist, you may never have heard of Quibi. It's a new paid-for TV app for mobiles, a sort of Netflix for your phone, even though its makers are desperate to avoid that comparison. And it's absolutely rolling in A-list talent - from Steven Spielberg to Jennifer Lopez to Bill Murray to Kendall Jenner. All its shows are 10 minutes or less - they're quick bites, or quibis, hence the name, which is pronounced "kwibee" not "kweebi". But, however you say it, Quibi looks set to be one of the most expensive flops in history.

If it does bomb, it will enter product Room 101, where dust-covered Sony Betamax machines sit beside stacked cans of New Coke, Evian's breast-cooling Water Bra, and the charred remains of Samsung's exploding Galaxy Note 7.

Of course, some ideas are just bad ideas, but Quibi is an idea with a very special pedigree. It's backed to the tune of a staggering $US1.75 billion ($2.7 billion) and it's the baby of DreamWorks' co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg - the former studio boss of Paramount and CEO of Disney, who, during his illustrious career in film, has overseen the production of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Lion King (1994), and Shrek (2001).

Now, he's serving up shows such as Most Dangerous Game, a thriller in which The Hunger Games' star Liam Hemsworth plays a father-to-be with brain cancer, who agrees to be hunted to death for hard cash by a secretive group of high-paying customers. It takes five episodes for the hunt to begin, qualifying it as the most interminable quibi so far, the gobstopper of quick-bites. Other dramas, such as the Laurence Fishburne-starring #FreeRayshawn, make a virtue of the compressed running time. In fact, more happens in its first 30 seconds than in the entirety of The Irishman. But good luck working out what's going on.

There's a tranche of entertainment and reality shows, such as Dishmantled - two blindfolded amateur chefs have a food dish blasted at their faces with a cannon, then try to recreate it from the flavours they tasted; closest one wins. When I texted the latter description to a friend, she just replied, "The end is nigh."

But then much of Quibi's content is not aimed at her or me, but a younger demographic - Generation Z and millennials, the habitual consumers of videos on their phones (however much older generations have got used to sharing funny clips during lockdown).

The roll-out of titles seems to confirm the audience Quibi wants, with lots of the dramas focused on murdered teenagers and young people in peril, such as Survive, starring Game of Thrones's Sansa Stark - Sophie Turner - who plays a suicidal young woman who walks away from a plane crash on a remote, snow-blasted mountain.

Yet big money has also been spent behind the camera as well as in front of it. Jed Mercurio - the creator of Line of Duty and Bodyguard - is developing a sci-fi thriller, Ridley Scott is executive-producing a quibi about a cursed computer game, Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro is creating a zombie drama. Katzenberg's pulling power is considerable. Spielberg - his fellow DreamWorks co-founder - is developing a horror series that will, hauntingly, unlock on phones only after the sun has set in the viewer's location.

Yet ever since it launched on April 6, Quibi has struggled to make an impact. Its first day performance - 300,000 downloads in the US and Canada - is dwarfed by the 5 million who joined the Disney+ streaming service on the day it launched in the UK and parts of Europe.

Quibi has now been downloaded by around 3 million smartphone users in North America and other territories, including the UK, which doesn't sound too bad... until you compare it to the 1 billion active users of quirky video-sharing app TikTok, clearly a competitor, for whose predominantly 16-24-year-old users 10 minutes is equivalent to several lifetimes.

The picture gets worse still when you consider that nearly all of Quibi's 3 million downloads will be on either the initial 90-day free trial or the 14-day free trial that replaced it. Quibi, unlike TikTok, wants you to pay to use it - $12.99 a month in Australia ($3 more than Netflix's cheapest package, although a $US4.99 version with ads is available in the US). When the free trials end, Quibi is in danger of falling off a cliff.

Katzenberg blames the pandemic for ruining Quibi's pitch to busy people who want to watch something while grabbing coffee or sitting on the bus, but is that sour grapes? Having put his faith in the quality of Quibi's content, he was gifted a literally captive audience hunting for things to watch.

The content, at present, is very US-skewed. I found myself watching The Rachel Hollis Show, with its ordinary-mum life-coaching tips, for an entire episode without realising it wasn't a comedy spoof. Hollis is a well-known influencer in the States.

By far the most insightful (and hilarious) commentators so far on the Quibi phenomenon have been Danielle Gibson, 31, and Rob Dezendorf, 27, in their cult podcast Streamiverse (which used to be called Quibiverse, but more of that later). They come from film, TV and tech backgrounds.

They were obsessed with Quibi, and began their podcast in February, six weeks before the launch, with a mixture of excitement and scepticism - "Quibi's gonna be a f------ rollercoaster and we're riding that thing straight to hell..." Dezendorf would announce at the start of each episode - timed to end in less than 10 minutes. "Hope you don't find it annoying, because it's Quibi's entire business model!" Gibson signed off.

They oscillated between believing Quibi would be a hit and a flop, but were soon gleefully dissecting the company's marketing and social media strategy as the work of Baby Boomers trying and failing to talk to Generation Z - Katzenberg is 68, Quibi's CEO is multibillionaire former Hewlett Packard president Meg Whitman, 63.

They also set about dismantling the tech appeal of Quibi's much-hyped "Turnstyle" technology that allows users to seamlessly flip between horizontal and vertical watching. The idea this would revolutionise mobile viewing brought laughter: "If there's a possibility that Quibi is the new frontier," Dezendorf declared, "then what else in my life has been a lie?"

Quibi responded by sending them a letter threatening legal action for use of the name Quibiverse, acting for all the world like a $US1.75 billion company trying to swat away an irritating fly just in time for their big launch. The podcast's budget? "Thirty bucks a month," Dezendorf tells me via Zoom from New York.

"It was so not self-aware. They should have embraced us... they need attention more than anything else right now," Gibson says.

After a two-week hiatus, though, the pod was back, as Streamiverse, with Gibson and Dezendorf now ready to dance on Quibi's grave. As the media pounced with headlines such as "Yep, Quibi Is Bad" (Vulture), "Sure It's Fun but What's the Point?" (Wall Street Journal) and "Quibi Is a Wasteland" (The Atlantic), Streamiverse locked into the inability to take screenshots, or share clips, or talk to friends while using the app.

Gibson compared it to being trapped in a cave. "The best part about stupid little reality shows is gossiping about them with your friends, sharing memes... Quibi feels dead inside," said Dezendorf. They did find shows they liked - slacker comedy Agua Donkeys got a big thumbs up. But the overall verdict was damning: "They had too much money, too much ego. It was too big to fail and guess what? It failed," decided Gibson.

Then the unthinkable happened. Katzenberg went on the podcast and admitted the legal threat was "a mistake". This was damage limitation of an extreme kind. It worked in that it did draw some of their venom, but both think that for Quibi it may be too late. "Quibi loves to call itself a start-up, because it rings all these bells of like, this young, fresh, hip company that can turn on a dime," says Gibson. "But everything we've seen from Quibi has been old, musty, Hollywood action."

Quibi is trying to respond to early criticisms, first with an update that allows users to cast shows to TV. But that buzzing fly thinks they need to move quicker. Streamiverse's advice: forget Turnstyle, give users the ad-supported version for free, and focus on storytelling. "Quibi's dead in the water right now, and they are going to have to resurrect it with some miracle," Dezendorf says.

What do I think? Some of Quibi's shows are next-level awful, but some are great. Flipped is fun, Agua Donkeys is awesome; and Dummy, a drama starring Pitch Perfect's Anna Kendrick as a woman whose famous writer boyfriend's sex doll starts talking to her is clever, funny and wonderfully distasteful. Would I pay for Quibi? Maybe, but not yet.

So far Quibi is rumoured to have spent only $US500 million of its vast war chest, which gives it plenty of room for manoeuvre. Quibi is floundering, yes, but it's not over until the fat lady in the water bra sings.

Telegraph, London