It seems College Humor is trying its hand something more than just quirky shorts for the internet. The site is releasing a feature-length comedy starring a bunch of people who you may know (depending on how much television you watch), reports the Los Angeles Times.
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The film, set to debut on iTunes and other digital platforms this week, is about a coffee shop, aptly named ‘Coffee Town’. The film follows patrons of the coffee shop and their misadventures as they try to stop the coffee shop from becoming a fancy bistro style lounge.
The movie, made with a low budget of just under a million dollars, is disregarding the Hollywood style of big budget film-making. Everything about the way College Humor has packaged the movie goes against traditional Hollywood. According to the site, all marketing for the movie will be done via its social media channels and the movie will only be released in select theaters at the end of this month during the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal.
“We think that there are some movies that need to buy a lot of TV ads and be in 3 000 theaters to be successful,” College Humor co-founder Ricky Van Veen told the Los Angeles Times. “But something like Coffee Town we believe can find an audience without those bells and whistles.”
Written by Wild Dogs and Arrested Development veteran Brad Copeland, the movie is clearly targeted at the young digital audience who consume most of their content online. The fact that College Humor is attempting something like this gives further credence to a new model of film and television production and consumption.
Based on the trailer, this movie could easily be a Judd Apatow flick except it doesn’t star Seth Rogen or Paul Rudd. Instead we get to meet some young Hollywood in the form of Glenn Howerton (from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia), Adrianne Palciki (from Friday Night Lights), Ben Schwartz (Parks and Recreation), Steve Little (Eastbound and Down) and Josh Groban (the guy raps Kanye West’s tweets — he sings too).
The characters look interesting and likable, it may turn into one of those movies that people end up quoting at parties and chances are it will get a frak load of views.
