Steven Spielberg (Duel, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Poltergeist (producer), War of the Worlds) is returning to the horror genre as he’s allegedly writing a “creepy” and “super scary show” for forthcoming digital platform Quibi, Deadline reports.
The site says the revelation came as Jeffrey Katzenberg, fresh from a spot at the Produced By conference, took his Quibi roadshow north of the border with an appearance at the Banff World Media Festival.
Katzenberg revealed that his former Dreamworks partner Spielberg is writing a series and has written “four or five chapters” of the show, which will have between 10 and 12 chapters.
Katzenberg said, “Steven Spielberg has a super scary story. He’s actually writing it himself. Getting him to write something is fantastic.”
The exec added that Spielberg only wanted Quibi subscribers to be able to watch it at midnight. He said that his business partner Meg Whitman came up with an idea – tagged as Spielberg’s After Dark presentation – to put a clock within the Quibi player to mean that viewers will only have a limited amount of time to watch the show.
Quibi will launch in the U.S. on April 6, 2020, and will cost $4.99 per month. It is set to spend $1B on content with the core-demo around 25-35. It will air videos in 7-10-minute chunks.
The digital platform has already unveiled a raft of high-profile content including #Freerayshawn starring Stephen James and Laurence Fishburne. Sony Pictures Television’s $15M project tells the story of a young, black Iraq War veteran named Rayshawn (James) who is set up by New Orleans police on a drug deal, runs for his life, and takes refuge inside his apartment building with his girlfriend and child. Elsewhere, it has an untitled Steven Soderbergh project, a non-scripted series from James Corden’s Fulwell 73 featuring Israeli mentalist Lior Suchard, Punk’d and Singled Out reboots from MTV Studios, Anna Kendrick-fronted comedy Dummy from Deadbeat co-creator Cody Heller and wiip.