AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Blowtorch: Offers group-created movies - Venture Beat

These days, it’s easy to shout “bubble” in the crowded theater of online video startups. Only YouTube has been a runaway success — but even YouTube hasn’t proven it can make money. Yet online video sites continue to raise millions of dollars in funding.

Blowtorch, a California company that has just launched with $50 million in funding, joins the crowded field. But it has a new twist at least: It will produce films based on ideas proposed by users and voted on by others. Users will be able to vote on casting, music, wardrobes and other aspects of each film.

In other words, group-created movies. Call it Hollywood 2.0. It will offer feature-length films, professional-quality short films, along with a social network and a mobile site.

The funding, which comes from an unnamed hedge fund, will be used to produce and market eighteen feature-length movies over the next three years.

Sony-owned Crackle does something similar: It produces videos from the ideas of its audience members. A sort of minor league for Hollywood. As we reported in September, the plan is already resulting in a traffic surge and millions in advertising revenue.

Blowtorch’s vision is more grand: It’s goal is to produce low-budget hits like Napoleon Dynamite, a movie that cost $5 million to make, then made $17 million at the box office and $90 million in video rentals and sales, according to chief executive Kelly Rodriquez. He wants people to say “I helped pick the cast” when they watch a Blowtorch movie.