BuzzFeed pivots to movies and TV
Popular website working on feature film
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — On an October morning, Matthew Henick, the head of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, maneuvered his black Lexus SUV through thick Los Angeles traffic from his home in Silver Lake toward BuzzFeed’s new campus, still under construction, in Hollywood.
“This is actually the first time I’m driving to the new building from my house, so we’re really testing my commute,” he said.
Eighteen months after BuzzFeed blew up a watermelon on Facebook Live before 800,000 viewers, the company has leased buildings on a quiet block west of Highland Avenue as it prepares to focus on creating full-length movies and television series.
With his shoulder-length, Troy Polamalu-esque hair still damp from a morning shower, Henick, 34, strode through a maze of soundstages and editing suites. It wasn’t quite the Paramount lot, but neither did it look like a space for some digital startup intent on creating viral videos on the cheap.
“It’s a much better place, especially for my team,” Henick said. “It feels a little bit more like a grown-up office, for lack of a better term.”
BuzzFeed started its motion picture arm in 2014. Initially, the division specialized in creating clickable video content, racking up an estimated 3 billion views a month. But over the past year BuzzFeed Motion Pictures has expanded its purview.
These days Henick and his team of 42 people concentrate their energies on mining BuzzFeed articles, lists and video shorts for ideas that may be spun into feature-length movies or television series.
One of Henick’s first big deals was with Warner Bros. to make a movie out of a series of posts by BuzzFeed staff member Matt Stopera on his travels through China in search of his lost iPhone. With the working title Brother Orange, it may go into production in China next year, Henick said, around the time when he and his wife, Alaina Killoch, 35, are expecting their first child.
Henick’s team is also working with Smokehouse Pictures, a production company run by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, to develop a movie based on a BuzzFeed News investigation into assassinations that may be linked to the Kremlin.
Since it was founded in 2006, BuzzFeed, which is now valued at about $1.7 billion, has anticipated trends in the media business. Its move into the entertainment industry could be viewed as prescient — but the company is also said to be pursuing an initial public offering of stock, and associating itself with a glamorous business may have the side benefit of attracting investors and bolstering valuations.
“I don’t think we do anything specifically for that reason, but it’s always a byproduct,” Henick said. “If our business is stronger and it’s growing exponentially because we keep finding brandnew businesses to get into, it’s going to allow us to hopefully go public or invest in a lot more stuff elsewhere in the company.”