Passionflix wooing fans of romance novels
Specialized streamer features only genre’s TV, film adaptations
Tosca Musk has had a passion for romance novels for decades.
Back in the 2000s and early 2010s, the 49-year-old South Africa native was able to harness some of that love into directing films such as “Holiday Engagement,” “You Cast a Spell On Me” and “A Cinderella Christmas” on networks like Ion and Hallmark.
But converting romance novels into movies and TV series was a challenge at the time.
“They were often considered too risque for regular television,” Musk said in a recent interview.
So in 2017, Musk raised $5 million from investors and launched her own streaming service, Passionflix out of Los Angeles, focused exclusively on films and series adapted from romance novels. She has since moved her streaming service to metro Atlanta and now has nine full-time employees.
Musk won’t release financial or subscription numbers since Passionflix is a private company, but, she said, “We are surviving, which is great.”
“We’re around and hitting our seventh year,” she said. “It’s exciting that we are still growing. Are we growing as fast as we’d like? No. I’d love to grow faster. But we’re still alive. My investors are happy. The board is supportive. We are still able to make movies every year.”
To date, Musk has produced about 30 different shorts, films and TV series for Passionflix. The most notable projects have been a nine-part film series under the names “Gabriel’s Inferno,” “Gabriel’s Rapture” and “Gabriel’s Redemption,” based on books written by New York Times bestselling author Sylvain Reynard, and TV series “The Secret Life of Amy
“There is a lot of room for niche platforms to grow. Netflix is everything to everyone. We’re like ESPN. More focused. People want specific things.”
Bensen,” based on a book series by Lisa Renee Jones.
The rest of the service is filled with films from other producers like the BBC’s versions of “Jane Eyre” and “Pride & Prejudice,” the 2002 comedy “Miranda” with Christina Ricci,
2003 period drama “The Heart of Me” with Helena Bonham Carter and the 2002 romantic thriller “A Walk to Remember” with Mandy Moore.
The service provides a tongue-in-cheek rating system based on how much physical romantic content there is ranging from “Oh So Vanilla!” and “Mildly Titillating” to “Toe Curling Yumminess” and “NSFW,” an internet abbreviation for “not safe for work.”
“We call it the barometer of naughtiness,” said Musk. “We do all levels of romance.”
Passionflix now shoots six original movies or series a year. Musk is also taping a talk show where she visits romance authors in their hometowns in the vein of Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”
While Musk started Passionflix in Los Angeles, the pandemic provided the impetus for Musk to leave. In 2020, she met with her then five employees and told them to consider a new home.
“For me, personally, I needed a good home for my kids and proximity to an airport,” said Musk, who has 10-year-old twins. “What others needed were affordability, quality of life and good schools. We went through every state, but, at the end of the day, we settled in Georgia.”
Ali Whitaker, Passionflix head of marketing, said she got into romance novels after reading “Fifty Shades of Grey” and is well aware of the genre’s stigma.
“Some people think it’s low brow,” she said. “… But they make you feel happy.
— Tosca Musk, CEO of Passionflix
It’s a form of escape like any other form of entertainment.” When she heard about Passionflix in 2019, she met with Musk and nabbed a job at the startup.
Whitaker calls the work environment collaborative. All employees offer input into which books to adapt and who to cast in the films. “She optioned a lot of books I recommended,” she said. “That level of involvement is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
Musk considers herself an independent spirit like her older brother, Elon Musk, owner of multiple companies, including SpaceX, Tesla and social media platform X. But he has no financial or strategic involvement in Passionflix.
“My brother is an important personal part of my life, and that’s it,” she said. “I would say he’s an exceptionally busy person.”
For Passionflix, Musk doesn’t spend much on traditional marketing, relying instead on word of mouth and a PassionCon fan fest. The second convention, which maxed out at 300 participants, concluded in mid-March in Puerto Rico, following an inaugural Los Angeles fest in 2022.
British recruitment consultant Kim Bircher,
57, and her daughter Laura Harris, 29, consider themselves Passionistas, as fans of Passionflix dub themselves. They discovered Passionflix during the pandemic, while Bircher was dealing with multiple family health crises. “We were having a really bad time and were looking for something to escape the fear of what was happening,” she said.
Actor Giulio Berruti, lead male actor in Passionflix’s Gabriel film series, caught her eye so she signed on to the service. “It was very user-friendly,” she said. “I was very impressed.”
She also liked how the films stayed true to the books. So she and her daughter soon became
VIP “signature” members, enabling them to visit the set of “Gabriel’s Redemption” in 2022 in England and meet the cast and
Musk in person. “We got to be extras,” she said.
While nearly every other streaming service has raised its monthly price, Musk has kept Passionflix at $5.99 a month since Day 1. But she admits inflation has made pricing a challenge.
“The cost of making movies has doubled since 2017,” Musk said. “Our fans would like us to have more content, but that costs more as well.”
And while other services are inserting ads to generate more income, Musk is mixed on the idea.
She would consider a “presented by” before the movie begins but would hate to interrupt her content with traditional ad breaks. “I don’t like that as a viewer,” she said.
Dan Rayburn, a media industry analyst specializing in streaming and technologies, is only mildly familiar with Passionflix but said there are some specialized streaming services that have thrived, including BritBox (British TV), Shudder (horror) and Acorn TV (international fare).
“There is a lot of room for niche platforms to grow,” Musk said. “Netflix is everything to everyone. We’re like ESPN. More focused. People want specific things.”